
THE 

SOUL 
OF FIR 





Class 
Book 



.Q»7 







Gopyri^lu N? 



i9o<^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



SOULS OF FIRE 




SOULS OF FIRE 

BY 
BAYARD de SAUMAREZ 




BOSTON 

1909 



LIBRARY Of CONGRESS 
ilea Received 
JAN 23 1909 

tuSS Aj XXc No, 



Copyright, 1909 
Thomas W. Roosk 






DEDICATED 



"SOULS OF FIRE" 

The men and women who live and love; who think 
and feel; and in whom is implanted the perception 
of the beauty of truth. Who, being neither mirrors 
nor echoes, go forward, stimulated by opposition and 
suspicious of favoritism; believing that 

"The world is the same ; and Honor is Honor still, 
Though it bring not sweet leisure, nor grist to the mill. " 

" The majority of men in every age are superficial in character and brittle 
in purpose, and lead undedicated lives; swarming together in buzzing 
crowds in all haunts of amusement or places of low competition, caring little 
for anything but gossip and pastime, the titillation of the senses, and the 
gratification of conceit. " — A Iger. 



INTRODUCTION 

THE heterogeneous contents of this book, thrown together 
almost at random, require, perhaps, a little explanation. 
The intention was to trace the poetic principle, or, what 
is the same thing, the idealistic tendency, in its many and varied 
manifestations; attempting even the processes of composition. An 
unexpected change having broken the continuity of thought and 
opportunity to pursue the study in its logical form, verse, I have 
briefly sketched the idea for others. 

This, unquestionably, is the era of the novel : the day of the 
poem and essay is in the past. The lines of thought that are best 
reproduced in verse are archaic ; there is little that is sensational ; 
its productions are of slow and uncertain formation; one must 
work in it for pleasure, not profit. Verse, for the purpose in- 
tended, seems to be the proper medium, just as, when we examine 
light, or other intangible matters, we do so by refraction, dis- 
persion, etc. So of all subtile matters. Written almost as fast 
as it can be read, it naturally lacks polish. The suggestive mood 
or influence having passed, I have been able to do nothing fur- 
ther with it but to entirely strike out the parts requiring it most. 

From the Patriarchs to Greece, through Rome, down to the 
bestiality of the Middle Ages — from heroism to the Inquisition — 
includes every aspect of intellectual development. Steadily ris- 
ing, it seems to have remained for the present to be superficial. 
Under the sheltering influence of advanced civilization we no 
longer feel the pang of sharp hope or fear. Petrification of the 
emotional centers is evident. The gallery at the opera house 
must be reserved for the "very ordinary people" who love the 
music, and have no hesitation about manifesting their enthusiasm. 
The uniformly dressed and correctly gloved seem to be there be- 
cause it is "the proper thing" — the trade-mark of good form. 

The lack of heroic ideals accounts for the extensive systems 
of petty larceny that distinguish our Civic Administrations until 
some spasmodic wave of reform sends honest men to the polls to 
do their duty. The modern "Captain of Industry," working the 
wires of his puppets, or with shameless effrontery deliberately 
robbing the poor and simple, is a weak substitute for such an 
ideal as that knight "sans fear and sans reproach," the Chevalier 
Bayard, 1 or such a determined spirit of honor as Leonidas ; 2 and 
the young men who held before them what the Japanese call, "The 
way of the Samurai" (its components are: loyalty, courage, polite- 
ness, and the sense of honor), could never descend to such depths 
as so many do who are very prominent in public life. 

1 Bayard, Pierre du Terrail, born 1476. The realized ideal of chivalry, uniting perfect 
courage with entire unselfishness, generosity and purity of life. One of his most celebrated 
exploits was the defence, single-handed, of the bridge over the Garigliano against a large 
body of Spaniards. He decided the victories of Agnadello and Marignano. Received his 
mortal wound at the passage of the Sesia. 

2 Leonidas, King of Sparta, commanded the handful of Greeks left to defend the Pass 
of Thermopylae against the Persian host under Xerxes, and who there perished to a man 
after slaying five times their own number. 



viii Introduction 



We shriek for war, knowing it will cost us little, individually, 
in taxes ; bringing neither peril nor privation ; and send our young, 
enthusiastic "Souls of Fire" forth to maintain our honor, to live 
or die, subsisting on the scantiest possible allowance, and paying 
them but a fraction of what many domestic servants receive : to 
say nothing of the scavengers of the streets. So, too, with those in 
the hazardous walks of life, without a thought as to whether 
they receive sufficient to nourish the body comfortably whilst liv- 
ing or to decently inter the mutilated frame when dead Scarcely 
troubling to search for the livid corpse "when the sea gives up 
its dead," and the screaming sea birds wheel above it as it lies 
stretched upon some desolate sand bar. 

We hear, without being paralyzed by the effrontery or over- 
whelmed by the absurdity, the clamor to pension those who, in re- 
munerative positions of the utmost security of person, know not 
what exposure to hardship entails ; and are deaf to the "still, small 
voice" of those without influence, who toil in peril on land or sea. 
A striking instance, the undervalued heroes of the United States 
Life Saving Service. 

As to the notes to this book — for which there is no excuse — 
I can only say that not until the last moment did I consider any 
necessary, and then relied, chiefly, upon memory. Familiar as the 
allusions are, they may, perhaps, serve to refresh the memories 
of some with that association with the noble, the brave, the gentle 
and the wise, — the glamour of whose ideality illuminates the years 
that are lost. They are common property. Should you recall, or 
have suggested, one inspiration of the beauty of sincerity, loyalty, 
nobility or valor, their object will have been attained. Tis the 
reflection of your own bright soul ! The appreciation of the 
poetry of life is as much the manifestation of the poetic principle 
as is the creative faculty. 

In a determined effort to eliminate what the astronomer calls 
the personal equation, anything really personal has been omitted. 

I have been dealing with thoughts and sentiments rather than 
descriptions, I lose by so doing; for where there is one who loves 
music, there arc a million who would sooner see a parade. 

There is no desire to cultivate sympathy through local color. 
It is comparatively easy to arouse enthusiasm by waving the ban- 
ner, or by playing variations on the national airs ; or, among a 
different class, by quoting Scripture, notwithstanding the irrever- 
ence attendant upon such proceedings. Wherever the "Soul of 
Fire" stood in history or tradition T have tried to voice the sen- 
timent ; whether beneath the Red Cross of the crusader, or the 
White Cross of the modern fire fighter. "Souls of Fire" arc found 
under the most adverse conditions ; "Men of God" in all walks 
of life. There is many a "Soul of Fire" standing in an incon- 
genial pulpit, beating his wings against the placidity of indifference, 
or the jarring squabbles of those of his parishioners who never 
seem 1o apply to themselves St. Paul's admonitions to women. 

Wherever an idea served to elucidate my own, I used it, giv- 
ing credit wherever credit was due as conscientiously as possible, 
but the products of the mind arc such a combination of experience, 



Introduction ix 



recollection, and inner consciousness that one cannot always be 
sure. I remember hearing a passage quoted from a very success- 
ful book. It came from the pulpit, and had evidently made a deep 
impression. It was rendered in a very effectual manner. To the 
mind's eye instantly arose the incident in history where that quota- 
tion from Scripture was singularly appropriate. It concerned that 
"Soul of Fire," John Sobieski, King of Poland, and leader of the 
army that had just rescued the mighty City of Vienna from the im- 
pending doom of storm and sack at the hands of 200,000 fanatic 
Mohammedans, with all the horrors that were entailed by capture 
in those days. As his heroic figure strode over the threshold of 
the cathedral, the venerable archbishop, raising his streaming eyes 
in gratitude to God, exclaimed : "There was a man sent from God, 
whose name was John!"* Every grateful heart in that vast mul- 
titude within the edifice must have felt, in the expressive lan- 
guage of Eliphaz the Temanite : 2 "Then a spirit passed before my 
face; the hair of my flesh stood up: It stood still, but I could 
not discern the form thereof : an image was before mine eyes, 

there was a silence, and I heard a voice ." The passing of the 

poetic principle of inspiration ! The inspired prelate had seized 
that auspicious moment to move the mighty foundations of the 
soul's belief in the over-shadowing care and loving kindness of 
the Great Father of us all. The horror of tremendous disaster 
and the terror of desperate need are seldom brought home to us 
now. 

Sure to be blamed for quoting so largely, I must confess that 
I consider them as jewels set in a rather dull frame. I have used 
quotation marks freely ; not, as we so often see, taking the ideas and 
dressing them m the disguise of other words. Our ratiocinative 
products are simply the transmitted refraction of what we hear, 
read, think and see, tinged by our personality. The lighter verses 
are spontaneous recreations : they may amuse some. The others 
are delineations of the influence rather than of the ideal itself. 

With all due respect to "the old women of both sexes," let 
me say that, while such romantic notions may be scoffed at, I still 
believe that as long as love is regarded as one thing and marriage 
as distinctly another, love will continue to "laugh at locksmiths," 
ecclesiastical or otherwise. Master hands of musicians and poets 
have swept the chords : I am not an advocate ; simply a delineator. 
The love I refer to was delineated long ago when Christ said : 
"She loved much." It has little in common with the cupboard 
affection that so often precedes the practical marriage; after which 
so often enters, blandly smiling and obsequiously bowing, "the 
(ubiquitous) party of the second part." It has nothing whatever 
to do with the promiscuous attentions that a conventionally proper 
introduction veneers. Love is "Ever the Same Old Love"; and 
the person who hesitates between possible choices is, in fact, offer- 
ing the goods to the highest bidder just as much as do those who 
sell for cash : whether the bargain be decided by servility, posi- 
tion, or simply ready money. Of course, if you have never ex- 

1 St. John i : 6. 

2 Job 4 : IS- 



Introduction 



perienced anything of this sort you are to be congratulated. 
Nevertheless, Channing said: "There is no merit in possessing, 
nor crime in wanting, feeling." 

I have used the word practical in contra-distinction to 
idealistic. A person who is not practical, in the ordinary ac- 
ceptance of the term, and useful in his vocation, is a menace to 
society; a burden to himself; and an object of commiseration and 
not always charitable remark to his contemporaries. 

I have not been against anything or anyone, only the "Imita- 
tion." To a certain class the obvious sanctity of the theological 
seminary appeals; to another, the swagger and glamour of Berge- 
racian valor : both follow the bent of their mind. Many an earnest 
preacher must feel the applicability of the remark of that "Soul 
of Fire," and eminent divine, Robertson: "The popular religion 
represents only the female element in the national mind; it is de- 
nominational, slanderous, timid, gossiping, narrow, smirking and 
prudish." 

I have used the romantic notions of Medievalism, or the very 
obvious machinery of mythology, to work to their conclusions the 
problems of idealism ; perhaps, because it is easier to use such 
means; but, in fact, for the same reason that I have, by no means, 
dealt with all the "Souls of Fire" that I should like to. True 
poetry is projected for, not by, us. "Made to order" poetry re- 
quires a faculty that seems only to be acquired with reputation. 

Sympathetic friends will doubtless ask: Why, after talking 
so much about poetry, did you not write some? To this, as to 
other questions of similar intent that I foresee, the only reply must 
be that "one must walk or use crutches as chances at birth." For 
the same reason the studies took the form of expression they did. 
Doubtless, I could feel, think, know and appreciate better than I 
could express. "When you speak of a doctor or professor, you 
do not, necessarily, speak of a learned man; only of one who ought 
to be learned." From those who have neither learning nor pre- 
tence little can be expected. 

The intense energy of character denoted by the expression, 
"Soul of Fire," is peculiar neither to time nor clime. The "Souls 
of Fire" are kindred spirits. Those of to-day love those of long 
ago. "And o'er the shadowy table vast the Hero chieftains greet." 
The successful ones have ever surrounded themselves with others, 
because they are above jealousy — which accounts for their success. 
Napoleon is a striking instance. President Roosevelt, looking away 
beyond political exigency, placing the right man in the right place 
to solve the great and perplexing problems of to-day, the same 
idea in practical application. 

Doubtless, I best express my appreciation of the aid and 
sympathy of living "Souls of Fire" who will see herein their com- 
mon thoughts, by omitting the dubious honor of mention in a 
work of this kind. Nevertheless, many thanks are due to every- 
one connected with the West End Branch of the Boston Public 
Library for the invariable courtesy and admirable service of many 
years. 



CONTENTS 




The Bust of Pallas 


1 


Composition ...... 


3 


Pygmalion and Galatea . 


5 


The Spirit of Athena 


14 


Phaethon ....... 


15 


Arthur at the Gates of Indolence 


21 


Hotspur's Farewell . 


19 


Leander ....... 


20 


The True Poet ...... 


23 


The Girl of To-day 


27 


Imitations ....... 


30 


Ever the Same Old Love . 


34 


"You First, Pilot" 


36 


The Captain's Words .... 


37 


To an English Sparrow 


38 


The Bachelor ..... 


39 


The Maker of Bread .... 


40 


On Returning a Book .... 


41 


"Never Give Up the Ship " . 


. 43 


The Passing of the Chief 


44 


A Prayer 


. 45 


The Crew of Monomoy 


. 46 


The Old Square Rigger 


. 47 


The Palimpsest of Memory . 


. 48 


The Coming of Coeur de Lion 


. 50 


The Death of Coeur de Lion 


51 


The King's Address to the "Ancients" 


. 53 


The Night Patrol .... 


. 54 


The Dance ..... 


. 56 


The Heart's Desire .... 


. 59 


The Defence of Delphi 


. 62 


Paul Jones ...... 


. 64 


The Library ..... 


. 70 


The Albatross . . . • % - 


. 71 



Dedication of a Gymnasium 








. 72 


To Music 








. 73 


The Streets of Baltimore 








. 75 


An Ether Dream . 








. 76 


An Idyll of Knightly Days 








. 11 


The Irish Exile 








88 


The Roll of Honor 








89 


The Bachelor's Soliloquy 








93 


Ossian Leaving Ireland 








93 


A Creed 








94 


The Lost Chords 








95 


Love .... 








97 


The Gift . 








97 


Not the Singer, but Song 








98 


Bohemia 








98 


Woman . 








99 


The Haven of Our Hopes 








100 


Friendship . 








100 


The Poetic Principle 








101 



THE BUST OF PALLAS 

" To the souls of fire, I, Pallas Athena, will give more fire, and 
to such as are manful a might more than man's." — Kingsley. 

Stretched before the bust of Pallas 

I was summoning the past, 
When it seemed my thoughts grew questions 

Addressed to the lifeless cast. 
Coldly glancing o'er my features, 

Deigning not to move her head ; 
Voiceless, heartless, with the pallor 

Of the fixed, unanswering dead. 

'Answer, and disdain not, goddess, 

I, a suppliant, dare pray ; 
Answer, ere the bright to-morrow 

Has become the dull to-day. 
Question after question thrills me : 

Break the silence of the years ; 
Release from those bonds of marble 

What upon thy face appears. 

"Tell me — in thy cold, high temples 

Dost thou mould the souls of men, 
Granting for their stern high priesthood 

Power o'er the sword or pen? 
Tell me — are the souls of fire 

Simply tempered at thy hands?" 
'Twas, perhaps, the taper's flicker, 

Gleaming, answered my demands. 

"Dost thou grave the Roll of Honor, 

In the marble and the brass, 
For the cattle of the pasture 

Who may chance to eat thy grass? 
Tell me — can'st thou make those noble 

Who are made of common clay?" 
Still there shone no light of answer 

In those eyes of Parian grey. 

"Tell me — dost thou give the fire 
To the Hero or the Bard ; 



2 Souls of Fire 

Or around the glowing embers 

Dost thou merely set a guard? 
Tell me, Goddess of the Aegis, 

Giv'st thou life to those unborn?" 
'Tvvas a flush of hauteur tinged her: 

Yet, perhaps, the glow of morn. 

As the grey of dawn upstealing 

Slow illumes the shores of night, 
So the blush of the perception 

Creeps across the Poet's sight. 
As the Spirit of Creation 

Moved upon the sombre deep, 
So the breath of Inspiration 

Breaks the soul's lethargic sleep. 

'Twas the flickering of the taper, 

Yet the cast appeared to nod, 
Just as in the daily battle 

Chance appears the Hand of God. 
Startled — roused — I sprang before her, 

Groping for the broken spell, — 
Peering, faltering, — still her features 

Retained what words cannot tell. 

Note. — Pallas Athena, Minerva (Myth.), daughter of Jupiter, the 
supreme deity of the heathen world. She was the goddess of wisdom and 
of war; the patroness of literature, the useful arts, agriculture, and all intel- 
lectual occupations. Her shield was the segis — Medusa's head — which 
transformed beholders to stone. 



Souls of h ire 
COMPOSITION 

(A Fragment) 

Strangely, yet sweetly familiar, 
As a thought that is scarce defined, 

Yet, rising, shines like a cloud-dimmed star 
O'er the sea of a troubled mind. 

It was when a bard's song arose 

His feelings in words to tell. 
Now rising, now falling, did he compose, 

Like the peal of a distant bell. 

Like a melody heard in the moonlight 

Where swiftly the waters glide, 
Distantly borne on the breath of night 

O'er the surge of some sullen tide. 

Seeming to tell of familiar things 

In a home that is far away, — 
Of a loved one musing, who softly sings 

Her hopes of a future day. 

Like the winds within some weird castle 
When the moonbeams slant coldly down, 

Seeming to offer a long dead minstrel 
The gift of a ghostly crown. 

Like a harp that has stood deserted 

In the aisle of a lonely hall. 
And at last to the shades has reverted 

Who come at the Midnight's call. 

And an unseen hand from the Long Ago 
Strikes a march of wild triumph grand, 

So the soul seems to thrill and re-echo 
To the art of a master hand. 

A roll, as of distant thunder; 

A plaint of windswept strings ; 
A stream of suggestion and wonder 

In the passing of unseen wings. 



Souls of Fire 

Then the lone of the early winter 

In the streets of a city strange, 
When the whirling dust signs sinister 

The presage of coming change. 

With the sadness that sweeps o'er the sailor, 
Who sails at the dawn outward bound, 

As he looks o'er the mist-shrouded harbor 
When the bells of the morning sound. 

Then the peace of an autumnal woodland 
On the shore of a rock-strewn lake, 

When the only sound on that quiet strand 
Is the lap that the ripples make. 

Gone, like a fool's machinations, 
Like the breath on a winter's morn, 

With the hopes and the aspirations 
That trouble the earthly born. 

Gone with the joys of our childhood, 

With the energy of youth, 
With the early resolves of the manhood 

That has broken the bounds of truth. 

Gone, but the yearning of memory 

Longs for the sunset sky 
That, with the beauty of poesy. 

Can the days of our toil glorify. 

Gone, but he knows it awaits him 

Over the sunset sea, 
Sweet as the sound of the angelus 

When twilight enshrouds the lea. 

So grand is the deep suggestion, 

So little of which he tells — 
"What voice yet could voice intuition? 

When words can but mimic bells! 

Over each low thought and dark meditation 

It falls with a sombre spell, 
With the menace and the intimidation 

In the stroke of the passing bell. 



Souls of Fire 5 

PYGMALION AND GALATEA 

PART I. 
In Cyprus born, out where the cool sea breeze 
Whispers in summer 'neath the olive trees. 
His earliest recollection that a stately Queen 
Seemed scarcely content save o'er him to lean 
And look such love, through such great, lustrous eyes 
That his responded always in surprise. 
The years slip by. One clay, all wildly wet, 
She does not come — could she then him forget? 
'Tis dark and gloomy, and the sobbing rain 
Blends with the whispers of the menial train. 
But she? Where can she be? She answers not, 
Though oft he calls her from his sleepless cot. 
He seeks, and there, shrined in the taper's flame, 
He sees her lying, sobs her hallowed name, 
And clasps her hands — cold, cold, and unresponsive now 
To the wild heartache of his childish vow. 
A queen she lived ; an angel now she lies, 
Shrouding the glory of her hazel eyes. 
Now she has gone. Gone ! gone ! forevermore 
Among the shadows peopling Memory's shore : 
A memory of beauty that, with beauty's awe, 
Returns with memories of grand things he saw. 

His father's memory came with war's alarms, 

Roll of the sea and gleam of gloomy arms, — 

A keen blue eye, a fearless warrior's way, 

A bold, blunt manner, and command's high sway : 

A hero figure pointing o'er the sea 

To daring deeds and distant memory. 

They both are gone; a sweet nurse takes their place, 

With scarce her beauty, but with all her grace, 

And taught him truth, and trained his soul to see 

The priceless jewels of Poesy's treasury. 

Sweet childish tales of dancing on the green 

By moonlight elves led by the fairy queen ; 

Of gnomes who delve in subterranean glooms ; 

And fays that flit through endless summer blooms ; 

Of hero chiefs, and dragons breathing flame, 

And knights who won their ladies with their fame; 



6 Souls of Fire 

Enchanted woods and spellbound maidens fair, 

Freed by the one who does the dangers dare ; 

Witches and wizards, trained in mystic lore, 

Forever baiiied and forever poor ; 

Ghouls of the grave, who wake at midnight's stroke, 

But, shrieking, vanish, ere the day has broke ; 

Of untold treasures buried in the ground 

That by a talisman are traced and found ; 

Isles of the Sunset, down the stormy sea, 

Where golden apples bloom on every tree ; 

Mermaids that sing, and monsters that devour ; 

Pygmies that squint, and giants that high tower, — 

All the old tales she tuned afresh for him 

When twilight's shadows crept and even's glow grew 

dim. 
Spellbound he sat, with fixed, far-seeing gaze 
That each brave deed enkindled to a blaze, 
Whilst fast he grasped in his white, tiny hand 
The imaginary hilt of a blue, steely brand. 

Of moonlight rendezvous, beside a marble fount, 
Two horsemen, meeting, silently dismount, 
Draw and advance, — cross, disengage, and tierce : — 
Bright steel the arbiter between contestants fierce, 
Parry, lunge, and one lies on the ground, 
When a maid's coming does their sight astound. 
One wins the fight ; the other wins the maid : 
Love is not conquered by victorious blade. 
Love and bright honor, hearts forever true, 
Are now the themes he loves to listen to. 

Ere yet of age he joined a mighty host 
That made descent on a far distant coast. 
Sailed to the wars, and found that those who fight, 
Fight for the wrong far oftener than the right. 
Blood on their hands and sorrow in their hearts 
Have the sad bearers of the bloody parts. 
Stung by their conscience to acknowledging 
They are but tools of some self-seeking king. 
So, peace concluded, he. returning home, 
Resolves thenceforward never more t< i roam. 



Souls of Fire 



PART II. 

Now, in the solitude of his high hall, 

The works of wisdom answer to his call, 

And teach him true philosophies of old: 

The ways of wisdom that life's truths behold. 

These were his pleasures : when the woodland rang 

To the clear keynote of his bowstring's twang, — 

The swift, sharp chase ; the plunge beneath the tide, 

The stroke unfearing, and the swimmer's pride. 

Thus, then, he lived, and these the sports enjoyed, 

In manly pastimes and pursuits employed, 

Until the change that marks all things below 

Pointed his spirit in Art's way to go. 

Poised on a beetling crag above the sea 

To make descent to its depths suddenly. 

His eyes as bright, and as an eagle's keen, 

Shot one last glance athwart the sunlit scene 

And, as it careless swept the vault of sky, 

A vision glorious met his startled eye. 

From a huge cloudbank, hidden as in fleece, 

So blended with it as to seem one piece, 

There shone a face, stamped with such perfect peace 

As only lit the goddesses of Greece. 

Love lit her eyes and, flashing down to him, 

Rolled o'er his soul like a triumphal hymn. 

Stooped like a sea bird for the swift descent 

He plu n ged straight downward ere he could prevent. 

Down, down, down, down, to the dark depths profound. 

Ere he recovers for th : upward bound, 

For as he passed, the bubble's glistening stream 

Round his late vision seemed to dame and gleam, 

Till, with a rush, he rose up to the air, 

To be thereafter bowed with wordless care. 

He heard the voices, watched the living stream, 
As one who wandered, — vaguely, in a dream. 
He sought for respite in his well-love I books, 
To find the letters frame a woman's looks. 
His tortured fancy found her everywhere, 
And placed her foremost in each desperate prayer: 
Each moment pleasure, yet each moment pain, 
Lulled in the lotus of day-dreaming's bane. 



8 Souls of Fire 

Now, now for Art to still the soul's unrest. 
Art and its impress for a love unblest ; 
Art and its secrets of the cunning hand ; 
Art and its beauties that fore'er expand ; 
Art, that might render what the soul perceived 
From the impressions by the eye received. 

PART III. 

Then forth he went amid the stranger crowd, 

And passed as fleeting as a summer cloud. 

He toiled in silence, though a burst of song 

Broke from the spirit of his manhood strong 

When triumph crowned him ; though the crowns he 

sought 
Were past the utmost of his compeers' thought. 
Gold could not buy, nor fame allure the soul 
That linked each moment to life's mighty whole. 
Pleasures are fleeting, 'tis forevermore 
True art is beaming o'er an unknown shore. 
His hand grew cunning. Ivory and gold 
Seemed to be plastic in his wondrous hold. 
Knowledge came, too, that was to others hid, 
Mysterious whispers, voices all unbid, 
Converse with shadows that new measures taught, 
Turning to marvels whatsoe'er he wrought. 
Then back to utter solitude he turned ; his hand 
Proficient grown to his high purpose grand. 

High in the chambers of his empty halls^ 

He took his station, free from this world's calls. 

Like some dim star in opposition set, 

Whilst wintry winds blew wildly cold and wet ; 

To shine through incommunicable space 

That barred alf thought and cut him from his race. 

Water his drink, his simple food eno' 

Just to retain life's spiritual glow. 

Cut off from pleasure, he on upward trod : 

Cut off from man, he rose yet nearer God. 

A calm serene naught earthly could disturb. 

Nor man's voice break, nor woman's smile perturb. 

Giving his soul to contemplation's peace 

In solitude that asked for no release. 



Souls of Fire 

He thrust aside all prospects in earth's strife 

To muse in silence where there was no life 

Of beauties of all life wherever caught, 

Refined and polished by the hand of thought. 

Wonders of cascade, cloud and woodland wild, 

Viewed unsophisticated as a child, — 

Dreams of the night and visions of the day, 

Wrought in the ivory ere they winged away. 

Through heats of summer, and through joys of spring, 

Twilights of winter and leaves rustling. 

PART IV. 

At last 'twas finished. Years had slipped away 
And streaked the golden with the gleam of grey. 
The task was finished. Loneliness of years 
Swept o'er his spirit with the tide of tears. 
It stood perfection, for a purpose grand 
Inspired the wisdom of a master hand, 
Now prone and dead, inert forevermore, 
To work the wonders of Art's wondrous lore. 
Ambitionless and moody, taciturn and still, 
He sat and watched it as if his stern will 
Might have the power to call the spark divine 
Across the barrier of the parting line. 
It grew the ruling passion, until every thought 
Caressed the outline that his hand had wrought. 
O wondrous love, whose sweet, tenacious hold 
May lead the tiger with one strand of gold ! 

Beside her watching, oft he saw the light 
After the vigils of the long-drawn night, 
And viewed Aurora 1 from the rosy East 
Motion to secrecy the prowling beast ; 
Out of the darkness in the chill of dawn, 
Before the curtains of the morning, drawn, 
Paled the wan lustre of the latest stars 
Amid the flaming of the day dawn's bars ; 
Then saw the chariot of the Sun renew 
His curving course, and his fleet love pursue, 

1 Aurora. — The personification of the Dawn. Apollo of the sun. 



10 Souls of Fire 

Till, through the Gates of Glory in the West, 

They sank through Ocean to the Islands Blest, 

As their commingling beams lit up her hair 

And cast a halo o'er her features fair. 

But she looked not, nor moved, but, cold, inanimate, 

Sat as he placed her in her throne of state. 

PART V. 

Among the nymphs in fair-faced Juno's train 

Stood Galatea, who, from the heaving main, 

The Queen had taken to the halls above 

Where feasts perpetual and unending love 

Yet sweeter grow, and youth, fore'er elate, 

Dreams in an ecstasy beyond the pale of Fate. 

But she seemed weary. Weary for her home 

Amid the thunders and the bells of foam, — 

And paler grew, and seemed distraught with care 

Though 'mid the glories of the upper air. 

Then Juno questioned — 'tis a woman's way 

To probe the mysteries of the everyday. 

Evasive found her — yet, when gently pressed, 

Bowed on her shoulder and the truth confessed: 

Love for the mortal, who, from Art's last fane, 

Stretched to the infinite in gesture vain. 

Juno permission gave — blessing the lover leal — 

That she to Jove might make her own appeal. 

Then to the seat of Heaven she, kneeling, prayed, 

Timid, yet unabashed, deep by her love wild swayed, 

"If such is love," Jove added, and then bowed, 
As, smiling, Galatea became a cloud, 
And from Olympian 1 revels and perpetual mirth, 
Contented, floated out o'er the sombre earth. 

PART VI. 

The shades of night were falling. Chill and wet, 
The winds were shrieking. Like a baleful threat 
The flaming West presaged the coming night 
In bars of splendor from the day's last light, 

1 Olympus. — The dwelling-place of the immorl 



Souls of Fire 1 1 

When Galatea beside the statue stood, 

And saw herself transfixed in gold and wood. 

And Juno, too, sweet smiling, also there, 

Stood lost in wonder at the sculptor's care. 

But o'er the mind of Galatea the fear 

Was thus expressed: "What brings proud Juno here? 

Why has she dared to subtly interpose? 

Around my heart suspicions dark now close : 

The all-seeing eyes are blind to this one guile: 

The flimsy pretext of a woman's wile !" 

Deep rolled the thunder. Wild the driving rain 

Beat on the casements in a stormy strain, 

Through which Pygmalion watched the lightnings part 

The inky sky, and o'er the empyrean dart 

In vivid forks. Whilst, by the thunder shocked, 

The well-built masonry in answer rocked. 

Sudden he starts, and turns. "Whence comes this light, 

Spectrally luminous, whilst round is night?" 

Then, with the volleyL g crash, his senses fled, 

And prostrate laid him, still as are the dead. 

As if from out the bolt bright Hermes 1 sprang, 

As wild the hills with its wild echoes rang, 

And from the quivering casement thus addressed 

The Queen of Heaven : "Star-eyed Queen, thrice blessed, 

Back to Olympian halls whilst time is left. 

I come to warn thee ; be not reason reft. 

E'en now far-flashing lightnings dart and thunders roll 

That shake the world and fright men to the soul. 

The hills are blasted and the harvests burnt, 

Because thy consort has thy meaning learnt, 

And the great vault of Heaven shakes with the angry 

tread 
That wakes the slumberers in the regions dead. 
Wide devastation reigns. The Thunderer's wand 
Points out to worlds afar and empires yet beyond." 
Hermes, swift on the wind, sped down the West 
To Sunset's gardens and the Islands Blest. 

Suspected — wronged — she strove to keep from harm 
The hapless mortal involved in the charm. 

1 Hermes. — The messenger of the gods. 



1 2 Souls of Fire 

Death she might give, but life, the King of all 

Retains prerogative, so thus to him her call : 

"Grant life," she said, "to wood; give blood to stone; 

Turn to soft, yielding flesh this polished bone. 

Let down these strands of gold to auburn hair ; 

Let these eyes live ; these nostrils breathe the air. 

This grant," she said, "and swiftly I return ; 

If not, let chaos reign, and all Olympus burn." 

Again Pygmalion woke. His startled sight 

Fixed on the statue that, in that weird light, 

Appears to breathe, and more, yes, living seems! 

Or is he mocked again by his wild dreams? 

"Live! Live! Love of my life; Live! Live!" he cried, 

"My heart's desire, and my soul's sweet bride!" 

And then he rose. "Oh ! wayward Fancy's feints 

That wavering reason with illusion paints, 

Till dreams seem real, and wishes have their way 

To don the apparel of the every-day ! 

Oh ! madd'ning hope, blent with my love again 

To strike my heart-strings with thine old strange pain,— 

The light of life gleams round her. Change on change 

Slow o'er the idol of my heart now range !" 

It was so. Unmarked as boundaries of the months or 

seasons; 
Subtle as blending of a wise man's reasons, 
Faint as when dawn first flushed the virgin East, 
Unwatched, unwondered at by man or beast. 
Soft as the beam that o'er the lifeless sea 
First took from Night its dim, still sovereignty, 
Rippling in smiles across the sombre deep 
To wake the world from its primeval sleep. 
Soft music rose. The years of silence broke ; 
Life flushed her features, and the statue spoke: 
"I come, Pygmalion, but. again. T go. 
Recalled forever from this world below. 
There will I wait thy coming, never shall T forget, — 
Where slope the hills of Memory 'mid the shadows of 

Sunset. 
Return! Return! Peals like the passing bell! 
How may I frame the anguish of farewell? 



Souls of Fire 1 3 

Aurora's steeds are champing. At the Gates of Morn 

The Hours, are stamping. Oh, that, mortal born, 

I, too, might sleep to with the daydawn wake 

In the Olympus naught but thy smile can make, 

For I, Olympian, without thee, forlorn, 

Shall find Olympus cold as the blush of Morn !" 

What change is this that does her accents mark, 

Now growing faint and farther through the dark? 

Her presence fades, though luminous as yet 

As is the moon through clouds all wildly wet. 

"I am constrained. The inspiration that came from 

above 
Thou has mistaken for an earthly love. 
Thou hast resigned the impulse of thine art 
To the wild passion of thy lonely heart. 
Losing thy inspiration, what is left to stay? 
'Tis the resemblance, not true dawn of day!" 
Shaken with anguish, thus Pygmalion's plaint 
In incoherent accents, scarcely voiced, and faint : 
"Great Zeus, my father, didst thou give me this 
To show life mocks us with but evanescent bliss. 
Gav'st thou me this to see it pass away, 
And know life models here but things of clay. 
God ! Can it be that all is mutable ; 
That all things change and naught is ever still ; 
Forever changing, now in light, now shade, 
Forever mutable, and doomed at last to fade : 
While Love itself, the sweetest, grandest chime, 
Is found, at last, to mark discordant time? 
O Father Zeus ! Then why not warn us back 
Ere we forever leave the beaten track ; 
Ere our own actions, — that is our own fate, — 
Stroke Hope's recall in that wild peal, 'Too Late !' 
She lived, breathed, spoke, became a thing of life, 
Sweetness incarnate, not to be a wife; 
She fades, a phantom, and a thing of air 
Framed in the glory of that maiden prayer. 
She sank, like Hesperus, down the stormy West; 
Life's labor, wasted, leaves me now unblessed; 
So let me die, ere yet the Morning Star 
Can the black portals of this night unbar!" 



14 Souls of Fire 

Jove marked the prayer, and Retribution's stroke 
Glared in the zenith and in thunders broke ; 
Then silence fell, save for the swish of rain 
And distant mutterings. Toils and pain 
Had ceased forever. Wan, thin, and cold, 
They found him lying in a pool of gold. 

Note. — Pygmalion (Myth.) "A sculptor of Cyprus, at whose prayer 
Venus gave life to a statue he had chiselled and had become enamored of." 

I have taken the old myth as a foundation for the study of the idealistic 
temperament talcing the direction of expression in art — blending everything 
in life to that end. I have not held to the accepted version of the story, and 
may be blamed on that account, but believe I have given the true significance 
of the myth. 

Success is but a secondary consideration to the idealist. The impression 
of the ideal remains for good forever. The lives that are lived bathed in the 
great white light of lofty ideality are not those which the world calls success- 
ful. That the greatest ideals are unattainable is evident from the life of the 
everyday. I could but leave Pygmalion — betrayed by the unforeseen, even 
on the verge of fulfillment, despite talent, tremendous will power and tenacity 
of purpose — dead at the foot of the pedestal of his shattered idol. (The statues* 
of antiquity were generally a compound of wood, ivory and gold; though 
sometimes carved from stone.) 



THE SPIRIT OF ATHENA 

Who will but follow where my reapers mow 
May glean a measure that will overflow ; 
Who in the darkness of the dawn will sow 
Shall reap rich harvests 'neath the sunset's glow. 

Who will but offer at my altar fire 
One grain of time, one atom of desire, 
That instant feasts where the dark lotus nods 
High o'er the banquet of eternal gods. 

Who will but rove where peace forever dwells 
Over the meadow of my asphodels. 
May pluck heart's ease, and in tranquility 
Find in my fields rest from dark enmity. 

Who will but seek. T will bright treasures show, 
Granting safe havens and fair winds to blow: 
Granting to make the votaries at my shrine 
If weak, then stronger, but if strong, divine. 



Souls of Fire 1 5 



PHAETHON 

Within the brilliant chariot of the day 

Phaethon stands. Impatient of delay 

The champing steeds strain at the foamy bits. 

Each gold-shod hoof the sounding shingle hits, 

And drives the pebbles, like a storm of hail, 

Across the strand of Night, as in the gale 

Boreas * volleys on the hapless deck 

The icy messengers of death and wreck. 

"What now ! What now !" Apollo, thundering, cries, 

"Fires thy ambition? For what mad emprise 

Rein'st thou the coursers of the star-strewn skies? 

Flames in the splendor of thy glowing eyes?" 

Phaethon. — 

"To drive this glorious team, great father mine. 
Relinquish once this honor always thine, 
For I would prove my manhood ; trace the day ; 
And feel the majesty of thy high sway." 

Apollo. 

"Be still, my son, spread not thy vaunting sail, 
Thou art but mortal, and so therefore frail ; 
Content thyself among the dazzling treasures 
Life offers thee in youth's all fervid pleasures. 
It is the ecstasy of youth, a passing dream, 
That tints desire with Delusion's gleam." 

Phaethon. 

"The passing dreams are yet not less than real ; 
Thought lives forever ; they but live who feel : 
The flame of Inspiration burns forever bright 
When fires of bigots have been quenched in Night." 

Apollo. 

"All hopes are wishes. Who would grasp at power 
Finds some new reason in each passing hour. 
Wait, and be safe, till Opportunity, 
Handing the reins, shall point the course to thee." 

1 Boreas. — The North wind. 



16 Souls of Fire 



Phaethon. 

"There, at the gates of Opportunity, 

A host disconsolate must ever be, 

With hidden faces, watching through the night 

For the first blushes of dear Chance's light ; 

And wait in vain — for see ! a stranger comes, 

With Fortune's panoply and Honor's drums, 

Wide swing the gates, a myriad torches flame, 

Echo reverberates the Roll of Fame, 

The gates are closing, though they frantic grasp 

The bolts of adamant and brazen hasp : 

In vain. For them, forever and forevermore, 

Darkness descends over Time's dreary shore. 

"Why should it be that in this tortured breast 
Love lights the fires that destroy all rest? 
Headlong Ambition drives the dazzling team 
Of stretching Honor to where Glory's gleam, 
Arched like the rainbow, spans the gulf of Time 
With deeds suggested and dear Memory's chime: 
Voiceless desire, with its unvoiced pain, 
Drives me all wildly to the course again! 

"Perversity! Why in the Poet's breast, resistlessly. 
Hast thou implanted this perversity 
Against the favorites of the present day ; 
Against the circumstance of Custom's sway? 
Why bends he not to gods held in esteem? 
Why for the fleshpot will prefer the dream?" 

The father stands, half anxious, with brows bent, 

Then turns away, half waving his consent. 

The youth, deep thrilling, shakes the firm grasped reins; 

The powerful team strain on the chariot chains, 

And, swaying wildly, like a wave-borne light, 

Dash through the dawning from the shades of night. 

Silent, Phaethon prayed. Crushed down the hour's 

alarm : 
Praying to gods, but trusting to his arm. 
All gods invoked, save one, — the goddess Chance, — 
Who, smiling, swept him with regretful glance, 






Souls of Fire 1 7 

From where, presiding o'er all earthly weal, 

Revolves unceasingly high Fortune's wheel, 

Now high, now low, now hast'ning, and now slow, 

Fraught with the trivialities below. 

Not hers to give. Hers but to turn the die 

For prince or peasant ; earthborn or of sky. 

Adverse the cast that from the yawning urn 

For him rolled out. None may the fiat turn 

Though pyres may flame and hecatombs may burn. 

Old Wisdom warns us : We must feel to learn. 

Not from ourselves can Zeus's lightning stroke 

Avert the evil we ourselves invoke. 

Ne'er can the power of human hands control 

The flames divine, or impulse of the soul. 

"For who shall o'er it with a measure span, 

Or place a plumb line on the soul of man." 

The reins availed not. Still the high-souled lad 

Clung to his mission, reckless, smiling, glad, 

Till, at the zenith's curve, Jove's lightning struck 

And hurled the mortal down the Steepes of Luck ; 

Dying he fell, whilst fraught with drought and death 

The team of Day dashed through the noonday's breadth. 

Gasping he lay, in sorrow that he failed, 

Yet with "bold words that no ill chance bewailed. 

"Now, from this crushed and mutilated frame, 

I raise this pean ; praise thy hallowed name ; 

Sing thy munificence in gifts divine ; 

One minstrel garland for all minstrels twine. 

Not for their weal, nor hope in earthly things, 

Hast thou implanted in the minstrel wings; 

Nor closely confined in a form of clay 

Colossal spirits of the brighter day. 

Yet still we thank thee. Memories our reward 

For all the anguish of the blood-stained sward ; 

The heats of action and the dusty toil ; 

The Crowd's proved rancor in Debate's turmoil. 

Spirits celestial, conquering though we feared, 

Who plucked our honor from Contention's beard; 

Looming gigantic through the fight or storm 

Beyond the confines of our earthly form." 

Yet more, and greater, words he would have said; 

He seemed inspired, tranced, he raised his head. 



1 8 Souls of Fire 

Bright visions thronged him ! 'Twas the father's gift 
To hide the passage and the spirit's shift. 
One sigh ecstatic breathed, back dropped the weary- 
head : 
The race was ended, for the boy was dead. 

Note. — Phaethon ( Myth.) "The son of Apollo — the Sun-god — and 
Clymene, who, having obtained permission from his father to drive his 
chariot for one day, set fire to both heaven and earth, and was struck by a 
thunderbolt into the river Eridanus. " 

I have taken the story to illustrate the sanguine, enthusiastic, poetic 
temperament of those who bring their poetry into the everyday and live it; 
who see poetry in the ordinary life that others never realize — the "Souls of 
Fire." The things that make life beautiful, apparent only to the initiated and 
expressed in myriad ways: the rush of swiftly moving bodies; the rhythmical 
swing of the sledge; the beauty of physical development; the indescribable 
grace of that highest expression of physical poetry, a beautiful dive. Music, 
unquestionably, is the highest expression of the beautiful, in its suggestion 
and unworded influence. I have endeavored to portray the restlessness of 
the disposition: so like that of the sea. 

The ambition here referred to must not be considered as ambition in 
its ordinary form — that sort of thing very seldom carries wealth or position 
in its train. "A rolling stone gathers no moss." 

I have used the word "perversity" in the sense that Shadrach, Mes- 
hach and Abed-nego were perverse. The mere fact of Custom's sway is 
nothing of itself. Who would be absurd enough to quarrel with the use of 
knives and forks, or the wearing of clothing, simply because it is the custom? 
Nevertheless, a person of known determination of character will bear the 
odium of perversity when the diffidence of modesty would fully account for 
the matter. 

The "point of honor" is what I refer to. It will not allow its votaries 
to truckle even for their lives. It should not be confounded with the various 
customs that serve to differentiate the civilized from the inhabitants of a zoo. 



Souls of Fire 1 9 



HOTSPUR'S FAREWELL 

Wait, if thou lov'st me ; thine own heart obey ; 

A bride to-morrow, but I ride to-day. 

Booted and spurred fits not the gliding dance ; 

Silks and fine satins bar no foeman's lance. 

Bugles to-day ; bells in the bye and bye. 

It is my spirit. I would scale the sky 

To sacrifice foul fear at Honor's altar 

'Mid the terrors and tumults of war. 

To flame and burn destruction on who flees 

To light me down the gloomlands of Hades ; 

Nor, in the embers of my outburnt rage, 

To view the past in the dull dreams of age. 

Deeds of to-day shall be my future's store ; 

I reap the harvests of the Evermore. 

Glean ye who will ! But fields uncut for me. 

Dream ye who will ! Acts are the dreams I see. 

Die each one must, what difference makes the day, — 

So that our passing shines for e'er and aye? 

As oft, at even, o'er autumnal skies, 

A flashing meteor strikes a myriad eyes, — 

A blaze of light from a fast falling star, 

Splendidly blazing through wide space afar, 

So would I flame (though flaming I must die) 

From History's pages and the Past's dark sky. 

Kiss, and farewell. Now to the topmost walls, 

Whence Danger threatens, but dear Honor calls. 

My name to fame ; flesh to the silent sod ; 

Such love to angels ; and such soul to God. 

Note. — Hotspur is the type of the fiercely active, martial spirit of the 
Middle Ages. I have taken the figure as a study for the active, enterprising, 
ambitious character — of all the most remote from that of a dreamer, in his 
own estimation, but who, nevertheless, dreams in the midst of activities. 

Men who are forever with ''Now to the topmost walls" on their lips; 
but no sooner is that enterprise accomplished than they see fresh walls and 
turrets looming above them still to be scaled. 

They never, or very seldom, read poetry still less write it; but they live 
it unconsciously: dreaming with their eyes wide open, and making their 
dreams come true. Aspiring, wandering, seeking for change and adventure; 
putting everything aside until this last quest is attained. Never to rest or 
settle until their poem is finished — with their life of ceaseless endeavor. 

Hotspur, Henry Percy, an English knight of the 14th century, who 
gained the sobriquet of "Hotspur" by his impetuous valor. After an ex- 
ceedingly tumultuous life, he was killed, in open rebellion, at the battle of 
Shrewsbury. — Shakespeare, "King Henry the Fourth. " 



20 Souls of Fire 

LEANDER 

"Bright beacon blazing o'er this darkling sea, 

Strongly the tide swirls 'twixt my breast and thee, 

Flaming more fiercely than thy leaping flame; 

Blazing more brightly than a deathless fame. 

Beam steadily to light me through the spray, 

High o'er the perils of the watery way. 

Shine true through darkness and the driving rain, 

After to-night thou need'st not shine again. 

Beam bright and clear wild-breaking seas above, 

Emblem of Constancy, Light of Unchanging Love! 

Light of my life, the perils of this night 

Become apparent by thy beacon's light. 

Love lures me on. The tryst that is not kept 

Will be the warning that Leander slept. 

Slept 'neath the wave upon a bed of weed, 

After the labor and the swimmer's need. 

Thus shalt thou say: 'His hand was manhood's gage 

Which thus he kept amid the storm wrack's rage. 

He dreamed of Sunset 'mid the toil of strife, 

And loved his honor better than his life.' ' : 

Then, standing mute, he gazed across the tide, 

Silent in prayer, yet humble in his pride. 

Cast one last glance toward the twinkling light, 

Then plunged forever from a mortal's sight. 



Souls of Fire 2 1 

ARTHUR AT THE GATES OF INDOLENCE 

Throw back these gates! Now, though with tarnished 

arms, 
I stride victorious o'er thy broken charms. 
Brighter my armor's flash full in the battle's van 
For my emergence from day-dreaming's ban. 
O Chastity! Lay not my secret slips 
To blood's fierce power, nor sweet Chance's lips. 
Fling wide the gates ! I must forever go 
Far from the power that I, fearing, know ; 
Yet, were I other; and not Arthur, king, 
My empire's boundary should be thine arms ring, 
For I, bold swimmer now 'gainst War's wild stream, 
Would be contented by thy side to dream, 
And build my castles on the Sunset's peaks, 
Though they capitulate to who first speaks. 
Oh you ! Oh you ! Love's spirit incarnate, 
Forever thwarted by some turn of fate. 
Wrong! Wrong and sin, sweet as fair Eden's fruit; 
Stronger than Death ; heart moving's sweetest hite. 
Sweeter true love, though naught can ever right, 
Than all the quiet of the priestly rite! 
Hence must I go. My life for England's weal ; 
My peace for Honor, and my dreams for steel. 
High must I hold o'er Error's utter night 
The torch of Chivalry and honor bright. 
And I must also, though I would not, wed, 
Be locked in wedlock with a cold heart dead, 
To strew my pathway, and fill up my ears 
With causeless bickerings and discordant sneers ; 
And hurl her boulders 'gainst the granite hill 
Of my unshaken, adamantine will. 
Have for thy truth lip-service friends to ask 
That I to please them make my life a task ; 
With niggard praise, and lavish censure drive 
My thoughts to thee, whom, though no priest dare 

shrive, 
Asked naught for all, but, with endearing charms, 
Strove to retain thine Arthur in thine arms. 
Calm, censuring friends, who, if I give or hold, 
Still swear I slight them and that I grow cold ; 



22 Souls of Fire 

And fall away, as leaves in Autumn fall, 
With Slander's whisper, or deep Hatred's call, 
To leave me free to face a world in arms, 
And prove my kingship 'mid that war's alarms ; 
To fall, to pass to Avalon and thee, 
Still leading- Christendom in years to be. 

Note. — Arthur, "A semi-fabulous king of Britain who flourished in the 
time of the Saxon Invasions in the 5th and 6th centuries. The founder of 
the Round Table so famous in the traditions of chivalry." 

I have used the figure to delineate the poetical in that, the hardest of all, 
the Pride of Place. Putting aside everything that makes life really worth 
living; sacrificing his love and wishes on the stony altar of duty to position: 
"My peace for honor and my dreams for steel." But still a dreamer looking 
far away beyond the present to the years to come. 



Souls of Fire 23 

THE TRUE POET 

It is not his to be content, 

Nor love the present day ; 
His spirit through a dreamland wends 

An ever restless way ; 
Now rising with the rising lark 

From some old English lawn ; 
Now sweeping with the sea birds down 

The sky line of the dawn. 

Strange admonitions from the night; 

Low whispers from the grave ; 
And o'er a steep and lonely path 

Long leafless branches wave ; 
Forever chill the night winds come; 

And through his troubled rest 
Dim phantom forms ride ever by 

Upon an endless quest. 

There, frowning battlements of old 

Ring loud with armor's clang ; 
Whilst from the balconies within 

Torn, drooping trophies hang; 
And, down long dusty corridors 

Of more than mortal gloom, 
Reverberate dread echoes of 

Premonitory doom. 

There, paladins of Charlemagne, 1 

The knights of Arthur 3 meet, 
And o'er the shadowy table vast 

The hero chieftains greet ; 
They who, alone, defied all wrong ; 

And they who o'er the main 
Led for the Cross and glory 

The hosts of Charlemagne. 

There Chivalry's bright ranks of war, 

With strategy at fault, 
Unhampered by the fear of death 

Move to the last assault ; 



24 Souls of Fire 

Roland at Roncesvallcs 3 

And Arthur in the West, 
Still face the hosts outnumbering 

With lances in the rest. 

He hears the cry of Hero,* 

When dawn at last had broke, 
And told her that the tide had foiled 

Leander's stubborn stroke. 
He hears the wail of Abelard, 

Borne by the passing breeze, 
Call from the gloomy cloister 

The soul of Eloise. 5 

Fair blue-eyed Queen of Ireland ! 

Bold Tristram of the Lake! 6 
Forever fadeless blooms the love 

Mark's blow could never break ; 
Mark, thou did'st well ; though treacherous 

But, fearless Tristram, why 
Did'st thou not better guard and keep 

The apple of thine eye? 

Launcelot and Guinevere, 7 

Why did'st not flee away, 
Contented, in obscurity, 

To pass life's fleeting day? 
Now, must you, in all petty minds, 

In execration live: 
And, if our God were like them, 

He never would forgive. 

Ye have no cause to writhe and rage, 

Oh, ye immaculate! 
Whom sympathy can stir not, 

Nor true love animate : 
For they have freely given all 

And reckoned not of cost ; 
'Twas theirs to be the gainers of 

What, otherwise, were lost. 

Oh. ye who have not fallen! 
Oh, ye who cannot feel ! 



Souls of Fire 2 5 

Oh, ye who are not hungry, 

So have no cause to steal : 
'Tis only right, in such a world, 

Such fettered birds should be, 
Who, with unjudging minds, should shriek 

For stern morality. 

Morality! What art thou, 

But the airiest attire ; 
A spider's web to shield us 

From the flame of our desire ; 
They who not yet have fallen, 

Were yet not tempted right : 
And scarcely they may judge the press 

Who are not in the fight. 

There is no bar for genius ; 

Nor rule for cunning hand ; 
There are no laws for Fancy ; 

Nor bounds to Fairy Land : 
You shake your heads despairingly ; 

He never can convince : 
Remain, then, genii, practical : — 

He what he must evince. 

1 Charlemagne, "King of France and Emperor of the West. Born 
742. Ascended the throne in 768." 

In 770 he subdued Aquitaine, and opened in 772 a war with the Saxon 
heathens which lasted thirty years. In the following year, crossing the Alps, 
he was crowned King of Lombardy by the Pope. In 778 he conquered 
Spain as far as the Ebro, but on his return was surprised and defeated at the 
pass of Roncesvalles, where many of his noblest knights were slain, among 
them his nephew, the famous Roland. 

After conquering all Germany as far as Bohemia, he was crowned 
Emperor of the West. Died 814. 

Charlemagne was one of the greatest warriors and rulers who have 
adorned any age. He was a lover of learning and the arts. With the excep- 
tion of his contemporary, the caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, he was the most 
enlightened sovereign of his epoch. 

2 King Arthur was the founder of the Round Table so famous in the 
traditions of chivalry, round which gathered the most famous knights of 
Christendom. 

He is represented as the brightest figure in tales of chivalry. The 
history, together with those of the knights of the Round Table, will be 
found in Malory's " Morte Arthur." 

Having fought all his life for his country's welfare and to break down 
the oppression of that lawless age — when might was right — he met his death. 



26 Souls of Fire 



at the hands of his old enemy in the last great battle for his throne. Over- 
whelmed and desperately wounded, with but one knight left with him, his 
enemy found him and drove down upon him with a lance. Unable to avoid the 
blow, King Arthur allowed the lance to pierce him through, and when his 
enemy, Modred, was within reach, he killed him with his sword. He is fabled 
not to have died, but to have been carried away to Avalon, to return yet 
again to his country. 

3 Roland. A famous paladin, and nephew of the great Charlemagne. 
Having command of the rear-guard of the army when it was cut off by the 
enemy in the pass of Roncesvalles, he disdained to call for help, but fought 
on until he stood the last; then, sounding the call that told the king of his 
peril, he charged to meet his death among the enemy. 

4 Hero and Leander were a pair of lovers told of in a late Greek poem, 
attributed to Musaeus. Hero, a priestess of Venus, dwelt at Sestos on the 
Hellespont, where she attended the light on the headland. Leander, who 
lived opposite at Abydos, swam the strait every night to visit her. One 
night he was drowned, and Hero, in despair, cast herself into the sea. 

5 Abelard and Eloise were two famous lovers (11th century). Abelard 
was a scholarly monk remarkable for his eloquence, which brought vast 
throngs whenever he preached. The mutual affection and constancy of 
Abelard and Eloise have been the theme of innumerable poets. In later years 
she entered a convent, he a monastery; each rising to the command of their 
respective establishments. Time did not diminish nor separation dim their 
love; and when they died they where buried side by side in Pere-la-Chaise, 
Paris. 

6 Tristram, Launcelot, and Lamorake were the three bravest of the 150 
knights who sat at King Arthur's Round Table, where none but the chosen 
brave could sit. 

Sir Tristram was a Cornish knight celebrated for his prowess. Sent to 
Ireland to bring the king's daughter, La Belle Isolte, to the King of Corn- 
wall, who was to marry her, he fell in love with her — and "the measure of her 
hate for Mark was as the measure of her love for Tristram." It was the 
cause of trouble all their lives, and finally of his death. 

Mark, the King of Cornwall, was utterly despised as a coward; Tristram, 
nevertheless, true to his knightly obligation, brought her to him, and then 
went forth to seek adventure. Wounded in Brittany, he was nursed by Isolte 
de Blanche Mains, daughter of Howell, King of Brittany, whom he then 
married. 

Unable to overcome his love for La Belle Isolte, he came back to 
England, reaching Tintagil Castle in the gloom of evening. The Queen, 
shaken with anguish between love for Tristram anil fear of Mark, bade him 
begone. Characteristically he replied: "May God be with thee, sweet, 
when old and gray and past desire." Kissed her, and clasped around her 
neck a ruby carcanet, the prize of the last tourney. When, "Out of the dark, 
just as the lips had touched, behind him rose a shadow and a shriek — 
' Mark's way!' cried Mark, and clove him through the brain.** — Tennyson's 
Idylls ("The Last Tournament" J. 

7 Launcelot and Guinevere. Launcelot was the most renowned of the 
knights of the Round Table, and lover of Queen Guinevere. 



Souls of Fire 27 



THE GIRL OF TO-DAY 

A silly shepherd wooed, but wist not 

How he might his mistress favor gain ; 
For on a time they met but kissed not, 

And ever after that he wooed in vain. 
Silly youth 1 why dost thou dally, 

Having time and season lit? 
Never stand on " Shall I ? " " Shall I ? " 

Nor commend an after wit. 
He who will not when he may, 

When he will he shall get " Nay." 
-Old Ballad, ' ' The Baffled Knight" (Anatomy of Melancholy) ,Burton. 

Dare you not love in the future 

For fear of a ghost ; 
Are you, like a watch-dog, 

To be chained to a post? 
Are you bound to a shadow 

Forever and aye 
That will flit from your arms 

With the dawning of day? 

You should fear for no bugbear, 

But take what you want 
Though all the wide world 

Take it as an affront : 
You, who must lie there, 

Should make your own bed, 
Though the dawning there find you 

Stark, frozen and dead ! 

For whenever a door shuts 

Another one opens : 
What writer has suffered 

From a shortage of pens. 
For every flower that withers 

A million still bloom. 
Stars ever have fallen 

Yet stars still illume ! 

What you feel you should tell 

In a versed roundelay, 
For 'tis the voice in your heart 

You, in writing, obey. 
You should laugh at the critics 

And all such as they — 



28 Souls of Fire 



'Tis a man's delectation 

When "there's the devil to pay !" 

You may take it at leisure — 

Yes, perhaps with delay — 
Or, all flaming with passion, 

You may rush to the fray; 
But no one should stop you 

With warning or sneer, 
For his own recollection 

Is a man's only fear. 

'Tis the friends of the present 

With whom we make gay; 
So the girl for our kisses 

Is the Girl of To-day. 
The game of the present 

Is the game that we play ; 
And for the race that is running 

We should shout and hurray. 

So, perhaps, in some gloaming 

You will whispering say : 
"I swore by the hazel, 

Though meaning the grey : 
I told her I loved her, 

But only in play, 
For I love but you, sweetheart, 

For now and alway. 

"She lifted me slightly; 

But you bodily sway ; 
For you are the ocean ; 

She was simply the spray — 
She answered a purpose, 

Merely a shifting backstay; 
But you are the cable 

That will never unlay! 

"With her for a life-time 

I never could stay, 
For, for the end of the evening 

I used often to pray — 



Souls of Fire 29 

But you know it takes practice 

To iearn to make hay, 
Fair maid of the Highlands, 

Or — er — sweet Rose of Galway." 

So court and caress them 

In autumn or May ; 
'•Neath skies that are cloudy, 

Blue, fleecy or grey. 
Court them whether English, 

White, black, or Malay ; 
In the pine woods of Brunswick, 

Or tea fielqs of Cathay. 

And court therm while driving 

In buggy or shay, 
Awheel or on horseback, 

In carriage or dray ; 
Behind horses dapple, 

Black, spotted or grey ; 
On the highroads of granite 

Or the lowlands of clay. 

Then toast them in water, 

Whiskey, wine or sweet whey, 
In the blush of Oporto, 

Or amber tinted Tokay ; 
And drink — if you wish to — 

Till you hiccuping bray: 
"All sweethearts are blended 

In this Girl of To-day !" 

Each love is a fancy 

That will soon pass away; — 
And happy is he 

Who can out of it stay : — 
But if you are in it, 

Then kneel down and pray 
For the bliss that is blended 

With this Girl of To-day, 

Note. — Carlyle says: "If you are in doubt whether to kiss a pretty 
girl or not, give her the benefit of the doubt." 



30 Souls of Fire 



IMITATIONS 

" Dare to be true — nothing can need a lie. A fault that 

needs it most grows two thereby." — " The Church Porch." Herbert. 

The men are stripping for the fight 

In the arena's glare ; 
The bookies shout the latest odds, 

Hundreds expectant stare. 
The gong has clanged ; now watch them close, 

And may the best man win ! 
A hurricane of whirlwind blows, 

The loser is "all in." 

The next bout slated for the night 

Is to the crowd announced : 
"A hummer from Old Hummersville," 

By all the sports pronounced. 
The referee has cautioned them, 

To-night they must fight fair ; 
Now every eye in that vast hall 

Is on the feinting pair. 
They stall and block ; the referee, 

Quite roused, warns them to "break," 
And as the dreary farce proceeds 

The crowd loud shouts, "A fake." 
"They fought ten rounds," the papers say ; — 

They did, — without a blow. 
They split the purse, for they were 

Only Imitations, don't you know. 

The drums are rolling through the camp, 

Red War is on the wing ; 
The skulkers find the hospital 

Now just the proper thing. 
The private fails at roll-call, 

The officer resigns, 
But the real old, clear old stickers stay 

Outside of the Red Cross lines. 

The drums are beating to the charge, 

Bugles defiant blare, 
The bayonets flash amid the smoke 

And round the colors glare, 



Souls of Fire 31 

Until the shades of twilight creep 

Across each grassy bed, 
Where Honor keeps her vigil 

O'er the slumbers of her dead. 

The war is o'er. Now down the street 

There sounds a martial tread. 
Cheer for the men now marching here, 

Cheer for the valiant dead. 
The rumble of the field-guns blende 

Its deep bass with the cheers, 
Both for the regulars who fought 

And for the volunteers. 
Behind the big drum major 

There comes the Red Cross crew, 
And men have joined their old commands 

Whom men who fought ne'er knew : 
But still high Honor guards them 

Who have felt their spirits glow — 
For the skulkers feel they are but 

Imitations, don't you know. 

The Easter chimes have roused the world 

And brought the radiant flock, 
Some to kneel in their penitence,— 

But more to show a frock. 
The organ swells the anthem 

That from roof to pavement peal», 
And the Spirit of the Word descends 

Upon one man who kneels. 
He tells them ere the sermon ends: 

"Make clean your hearts within, 
The Master holds hypocrisy 

The deadliest of sins ; 
To love thy neighbor as thyself 

Is not to scandalize: 
God will not hold thee guiltless ^ 

Though thine offering reach the skies. 
The deacons hold a meeting, 

Just to sift the matter out : 
Such doctrines are a shade too harsh, 

And not beyond a doubt. 



32 Souls of Fire 

They choose another pastor, 

The man of God must go, — 
They want another like themselves, 

An Imitation, don't you know. 

The curtain rises on a show 

A blaze of life and light, 
Where girls produce the sort of thing 

Some people call "All right." 
The leading lady sings a song — 

In a voice that might have been — 
That, were it not upon the stage, 

Would be pronounced obscene. 
And thinking people wonder what 

The thing is all about ; 
And why, instead of singing, 

The chorus scream and shout. 
When the orchestra is wailing, 

Like a fog horn in a fit, 
There suddenly appears the man — 

The man who made the hit — 
And to old "Yankee Doodle" 

He waves the flag on high ; — 
Those blood red bars of battle, 

And on the blue ground of the sky, 
That galaxy of glory 

Plucked from the days gone by. 
And the souls who love their country, 

Touched till the teardrops start, 
Rise to salute the colors 

That are dear to every heart. 
And they cheer — but they cheer the banner, 

Not the show nor the trickster's art. 
For the man who waves that banner, 

And the people who run the show, 
Must feel they are the limit 

In Imitations, don't you know. 

There is a freewill offering 

Presented to the poor, 
A kindly gift of bounty 

That breathes the Christian lore. 



Souls of Fire 33 

Perhaps a gift of money 

To found a library 
That will let the lamp of knowledge light 

The eyes that wish to see : 
A university endowed 

To trace the star-strewn skies, 
Or search for anesthetic 

That as yet a mystery lies. 
To clothe and keep the watcher 

Who has burned the Sacred Fire 
In toils for which mere money 

Is the semblance of a hire. 
But a little craven creeper 

Dares to hurl the taunt-and sneer 
That subtly makes the god-like gift 

The hate of hell appear. 
The weather-vanes of Public Life, 

That any breath may shift, 
Have the impudence to judge the thought 

And to refuse the gift. 
It was not offered to themselves, 

Nor costs them to refuse ; 
It is the poor and public 

Who by their refusal lose. 
But the notoriety that makes 

The little shrimp soul swell 
Must seem a jeering chorus 

From the myrmidons of hell. 
And the man on such occasions, 

Who, with scarce "Thanks," says "No," 
Must feel the meanest, cheapest, vilest 

Imitation, don't you know. 

Beside the race course and in life 

There are a few who hedge ; 
It is not fit that every man 

Be apex to the wedge! 
But face this insincerity 

Unblinded by their show 
Which is, as their successes, 

But Imitation, don't you know. 



34 Souls of Fire 



EVER THE SAME OLD LOVE 

" Love he comes, and Love he tarries, 
Just as fate or fancy carries ; 
Longest stays where sorest chidden ; 
Laughs and flies when pressed and bidden." 

— Old Ballad. 

A youth on a time wooed a maiden, 

He offered her love galore, 
But she seemed a marble Madonna 

Ever dreaming of heavenly lore. 

She seemed to him a lone star 
That shone o'er a stormy sea, — 

Serene in the midst of a tempest 
From which he could not flee. 

A cold, yet radiant angel, 

Whose calm, sweet, gentle eyes 
Were centered on some vision 

Beyond the sunset skies. 

Austere as cathedral's grandeur, 

Cold as decree of doom, 
It breathed o'er his aspirations 

The chill of the churchyard's gloom. 

She seemed a vestal virgin 

Intent on the altar flame, 
Yet hearing a strain celestial 

That from eternity came. 

The heart and the homage he offered 

Seemed naught to the church bell's chime, 

That moved her to joy ecstatic, 
Deep, mystic, and sweetly sublime. 

He pleaded. He told of heartache : 
Ever deeply he shook and sighed, 

But she seemed to be dreaming of heaven 
When he almost broke down and cried. 

Youth, money, and love he offered: — 

She spoke of the higher life: — 
He said, — but could not convince her, — 

That the noblest name was wife. 



Souls of Fire 3 5 

Oh, obdurate heart of sweet woman! 

So deep, so tender and true ; 
For a man holds a passion but only 

Until he can find a new. 

No heaven he wished but her favor, 

No music but in her voice, 
And the light of her eyes sufficient 

To make him forever rejoice. 

She discoursed, — with a dreamy expression, — 
Of the church, and the mission divine, 

Till the blood in his veins grew icy, 
And shivers ran up his spine. 

She seemed a saint ethereal 

In the rays of an oriel. 
Whom an anthem was wafting heavenward 

From the gaze of an infidel. 

He liked to hear a good sermon, 

He gladly followed the bell, 
But he felt no inclination 

For a drear monastic cell. 

But when in the chase you follow 

You must take them as they come : 
The ditches, the hedges, the mud-holes, 

Are integers that make the sum. 

So off next Sunday morning, 

Before the bells began, 
He started, and, — fearing to miss it, — 

For nearly three miles he ran. 

All breathless he crossed the threshold, 

Inspired he took his seat, 
And ere the organ had ended 

Had sworn to never eat meat. 

But why all this flutter of feathers? 
What magic has seized the maids? 



36 Souls of Fire 

'Tis only the rector who enters 
Preceded by his aids ! 

But after he saw the rector 

After he "sized" him up, 
He knew why he could not win her, — 

He felt that the "jig was up." 

" Men study women as they do the barometer, but they do not 
understand until the day after." — " Thoughts of a Queen." 



"YOU FIRST, PILOT" 

Above the hurrying selfishness of modern days 
Let us recall, bright Craven, your calm ways, — 
Knight sans pareil, Chivalry's truest son, 
Crowning with dignity the race that was not won. 

What pride of breeding stretching down the years 
Crushed in your breast the tumult of your fears, 
Linking your ancestry to demi-gods and kings ; 
Granting to mortal an immortal's wings? 

Above the occasion and the love of life, 

The curiosity and impulse of the strife. 

Truer and nobler you than victors crowned 

By statemen's craft and by the world renowned! 

The abnegation and the sense so fine 

As with the smoke wreaths of your guns to twine. 

"You first, pilot," some may understand. 

But more will blame you that you so did stand. 

Above the ceremonial and the pride of dress, 

In all the customs of the vulgar press 

Who deem such mad, fit but for fairy lore. 

Whom inbred courtesy betrays to keep them ever poor. 

Note. — During the American Civil War, at the battle of Mobile Bay, 
the monitor "Tecumseh," commanded by Captain Craven, was torpedoed 
and sunk. Craven and the pilot were in the conning tower at the time, and 
there was but one narrow exit to the ladder leading to safety. Both rushed, 
Craven reaching it first, but, rising superior to the occasion, with unexampled 
courtesy he stood aside, saying: " You first, pilot." The pilot ascended, 
and was saved. Craven sank with the ship. 



Souls of Fire 37 

THE CAPTAIN'S WORDS 

"Don't cheer, boys; the poor devils are dying," 
Are the words of a hero now lying 
In the sunless halls of the storied past, 
Where the colors forever fly at half-mast. 

No conqueror's boast he sent down to fame 
To mantle the conquered cheek with shame; 
'Twas simply the words of sweet courtesy 
He twined in the laurels of victory. 

Braving the censure of custom dear, 
His was a heart that knew not fear; 
Calm in the dread of the danger hour ; 
Curbing the lust of the victor's power. 

Calming the impulse wild to cheer, 
Thrilling with joy of the victory near; 
Quelling the riot as hearts beat high, 
Sure of the foe they were sweeping by. 

The engine's throb as they part the wave 
Beat a deep requiem for the brave ; 
Tolling the knell of the hostile fleet, 
O'erwhelmed, in disaster, going down in defeat. 

The captain's fame rests with the past, 
But his words on the waters of life he cast, — 
And they will return him an hundredfold, 
He who was gentle, yet brave and bold. 

Note. — These were the actual words of Captain Philip, of the U. S. S. 
"Texas," at the battle of Santiago, when the Spanish fleet had been dc 
feated, and, as customary, the sailors of the victorious fleet were about to 
cheer. This speech and that of Captain Craven of the monitor "Tecumseh," 
at the battle of Mobile Bay, form two of the most magnanimous incidents 
in the annals of warfare, reflecting a bright lustre upon the banner beneath 
which so many of the truly noble sentiments of modern days have found 
expression. 



38 Souls of Fire 



TO AN ENGLISH SPARROW 

Sweet little bird, native to my own land, 

Take for your song the bounty of my hand ; 

Sing of our home, you little exile bird. 

And take my love for memories you have stirred. 

Dear comrade mine, — for wanderers both are we, 
Both from that isle adown the Western Sea; 
Sing to me then of hearths and homes afar — 
Exile unending still whilst we are what we are. 

We both are poor. What care we though we be, 
For our one joy is to sing and be free. 
A world against bows not the spirit down 
Alike indifferent to its smile or frown. 

We ask for naught but what is ours to earn, 
For we are proud as they are hard and stern. 
We, strangers here, claim but the stranger's due, — 
Respect, at least, until we prove untrue. 

Raise high thy song at twilight, in the morn, 
That I may dream of where we both were born ; 
Though, waking up, I know that still the sea 
Rolls 'twixt the land that nurtured you and me. 

Those notes you chirp, my well loved country bird, 
Oft in their peril were by England's heroes heard ; 
Oft did your song peal through the leafy wood 
When on the bow leaned fearless Robin Hood. 1 

Though oft I call through the long rainy day, 
You are content out in the wet to stay : 
You will not come, though far I stretch my hand, — 
Like me, you learnt distrust in this strange land. 

1 Robin Hood, a daring outlaw. Subsequently raised to dignity and 
position »f trust by Richard, Catur de Lion, who found in him a congenial 
spirit. 



Souls of Fire 39 

THE BACHELOR 

No nagging peacock wails because his wife; 
No spendthrift children long to end his life. 
No expectations torture, nor does he sigh — 
Stung by the mockery in some beauty's eye. 

He may in solitude enjoy his books, 

Secure from warring words, or yet more warring looks. 

And in tranquility and comfort he may read 

Of wanderers weary, in peril and sore need. 

He may devote God's peaceful Sabbath Day 
To Him and they who pioneered the way — 
Those who of old through tribulation sought 
To burst for us the barricades of thought. 

He may not hear dear little children's prayer, 

Nor climb with them the steep forbidding stair; 

Nor is he called in agony to pray 

When death would snatch them from his arms away. 

He may without one apprehension smoke, — 
None look reproach through watering eyes, and choke. 
And through the wreaths he makes, but cannot stay, 
Loved forms look back from the dim far-away. 

He does not stamp and wildly imprecate ; 
Rail at the world, and shake his fist at Fate, 
Because befeathered birds effeminate 
Have fired his wife with zeal to emulate. 

No dubious friends he never saw before 
Contrive, by visiting, to make and keep him poor. 
He shoots the bolt, and double locks the door, 
And straight forgets the world is such a bore. 

Note. — Plutarch tells of a Greek philosopher who compared life to the 
Olympic games, to which some go to contend for a prize; some to sell their 
wares; some for experience; some to make acquaintance, but almost all to 
further their own ends, political or otherwise; a few simply to look on: 
"That," he added, "is my object in life." 



40 Souls of tire 



THE MAKER OF BREAD 

You may rave of the beauty and grandeur of art, 
Expressed in position, a posture, or part ; 
Of a picture, a poem, a statue or scene, 
Yet miss in the raving whatever they mean. 

You may rave about women, young, old, or passe ; 

The lines of a lifetime or the mould of a day ; 

The beautiful blondes or brunettes of fire, 

Yet miss their true standing in the breath of desire. 

Yes, rave about music ! There you cannot be wrong, 
So dance to the piper and put it on strong; 
But while you rave about these give me leisure instead 
To sing of that artist, the Maker of Bread. 

The fashions will change (a thing husbands dread), 
The only fashion forever is the fashion of bread. 
And whether pastry or pudding, sweet cookies or cake, 
The requisite talent is the talent to bake. 

Mysterious meetings ! Fair women in red ! 
For what are you seeking? From whom have you fled? 
Disillusion the morbid ! — but — you better were dead ! 
For not one in a million is a Maker of Bread! 

A poem in flour! Yes, you giggling fool, 
The hand of the housewife is the hand that will rule. 
Art has no measure ; true merit will shine 
Whether sculptured in marble or destroyed when we 
dine. 



Souls of Fire 41 

ON RETURNING A BOOK 

"As soon seek roses in December, ice in June ; hope constancy 
in wind, or corn in chaff ; believe a woman or an epitaph, or 
anything that's false, before you trust in critics. — Byron. 

Thanks, for the favor of a borrowed book 
That I requested, fearless of the look 
That oft accompanies a favor gained, — 
The superciliousness of critics, pained. 

The hypercritical may sneer,— the seeker finds, 
Though seldom helped on by ignoble minds, 
It is the nobler part to pass the torch 
And light the stranger to the temple's porch ! 

The stranger met, though dusty and forlorn, 
May be like him, who in the Halls of Morn 
Grows older ever, yet, with immortality, 
Has knowledge, too, of things we never see. 

The old, old tales, oft heard in boyhood's days, 
And that I, too, oft blended with my lays,— 
The common heirlooms of the earthly born, 
That teach that gods may not, unpunished, scorn. 

Knowledge to all does now her page unroll, 
Chill penury represses not the soul.2 
"Be bold" and try thyself,— the race is won,— 
But not by "silent Greeks" 3 who never run. 

To profess ignorance, what courage rare ! 

To crush the sensitiveness, and to dare : 

For who would learn, regardless of cold eyes, 

Must sit respectful at the footstool of the Wise. 

i Tithonus, son of Laomedon, King of Troy. Aurora, goddess of the 
Dawn, loved him, and prevailed upon Jupiter to grant him immortality, but 
neglecting to have perpetual youth attached to the boon, he grew ever older, 
wandering disconsolate about the Halls of Morn. 

"Alas, for this grey shadow, once a man, ^ 

So glorious in his beauty, and thy ^oice^^ « TUhamu » 

2 Gray's Elegy. . 

3 "Silent Greeks." I have borrowed these expressive words from 
William Mathews (who, in turn, I believe, is indebted to another for them), 
to signify, tersely, the over-educated whose education avails not. 



42 Souls of Fire 

This be a motto then : To never fear 
To cross an arm, an inference, or a sneer, 
That later on, still cursed by those cold eyes, 
We sit in conclave with the Valorous Wise. 

There is a mansion on the twilight hills 
That oft with strain of timid writer thrills. 
Abode of all who know the critic fear : 
"Abandon hope all ye who enter here." 1 

"Arms and the man," 2 the impulse, now the deed: 
The words are flames that "he who runs may read." 3 
"Be bold," 4 "Be not too bold," yet 'tis not overbold 
To strike for welding ere the steel grows cold. 

The spirit lives, for Homer never dies, 
Who thought the world a disc 'twixt ocean and the skies ; 
We learn! We learn ! And to our uses turn 
Analogies that we, inspired, discern. 

The "Unknown God," 5 whose messages so brief 
Are plain to poets, and the Hero Chief 
Who, "With, or on it" 6 for his battle-cry, 
Does superficiality in all defy. 

1 "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." — Dante. Inscription over 
the entrance to the infernal regions. 

2 "Arms and the man. " The opening words of Virgil's "vEneid." 
8 "He who mns may read." — Habakkuk ii:2. 

4 Over the portal of one of the ancient temples stood the inscription 
"Be Bold." Again, over the next inner passage, "Be Bold." But over 
the last porch to be passed, "Be Not Too Bold." 

5 In very ancient times there is said to have been erected an altar to 
the " Unknown God," which, in view of the religion as then expounded by 
the priests, is a remarkable tribute to philosophy. 

6 "With, or on it." In ancient warfare the loss of the shield was con- 
sidered in the highest degree disgraceful — implying that the arms had been 
relinquished in flight. Among the Spartans, the most warlike of the nations 
of antiquity, the mother, arming her son for battle, as she handed him the 
shield, did so with the admonition: " With, or on it." The valiant dead 
being carried from the field on their shields. 



Souls of Fire 43 

"NEVER GIVE UP THE SHIP" 

Down from the past sounds a harp strain's ring 
To the song that I hear a dead minstrel sing. 
A theme ever young; a theme ever right: 
True love for the fair; and for all Honor Bright. 

Down through the years it comes stealing to me, 

A clue to the past and what is hereditary ; 

A song never old, sounding a high intent : 

Scorn for the greed of gold ; love for life well spent. 

I hear it steal down from the still solitudes 

Where lofty conception amidst grandeur broods: 

The world is the same : Honor is honor still 

Though it bring not sweet leisure nor "grist to the mill." 

It takes me down through the steel-girded past 
Where Honor was nailed with the flag to the mast; 
And it points to the future, sounding lonely and drear, 
And warns me to keep my escutcheon clear. 

Saying: "Cling, though now all seems so hopeless to 
thee : 

Strike out! Though the tide fast sweeps you out to the 
sea; 

Pick up the gauntlet Fate hurls to your feet ; 

Though the life-blood be ebbing, ne'er acknowledge de- 
feat. 

"Come to the mark when the trumpet call sounds, 
The stays may hold you, though broken the rounds, 
Though 'catching a Tartar' ; aye, 'had on the hip,' 
Never lower your colors ; 'Never give up the ship.' " 

Note. — "Don't give up the ship. Fight her till she sinks." Words 
of Captain Lawrence, of the U. S. S. "Chesapeake," as he lay, mortally 
wounded, during the action with the British frigate, "Shannon. " War of 1812. 



44 Souls of Fire 



THE PASSING OF THE CHIEF 

Respectfully dedicated to the memory of the late Chief Louis P. Webber 
of the Boston Fire Department. 

Chief of the Past, to-day our warning bell 
Strokes to our hearts for you a requiem knell, — 
Pass out to peace from wars that never end 
Fought by the cohorts that must break, not bend. 

No more to triumph o'er the foe of all, 

Or muster with us at the morning call ; 

Nor through your slumbers catch the tapper's stroke 

Before the house-gong has the silence broke. 

To snap the collars and secure the bits, 

No more to strive before the big gong 1 hits; 

Nor through the darkness catch the mounting glare 

That lights the labors of the ones who dare. 

The night has ended, — as so oft before, 
The webs of lines and ladders are no more, — 
Melting with day-dawn, like a fairy scene, 
To the forgetfulness of what has been. 

Alike to you our flowers or my song, 

The "silent tapper" 2 or the "fire gong," s 

Slow "automatic," 4 or the treble shrill 

Of breathless accents that imparts the "still." 5 

Brave 'mid the bravest of the chosen brave, 
Proudly thy white 6 hat gleams across the grave, 
Through mists of memories sweeping from the past, 
Looming intrepid, fearless to the last. 

1 It is customary to leave the house under ordinary conditions before 
the rounds of the box number have ceased striking on the tapper, and the 
bells and gongs begin to give the number of the box. 

2 "Silent tapper." So called from being much lighter in sound than 
the old-fashioned gongs, and not so liable to awaken the men unnecessarily. 

3 The fire gong is the gong pulled by the patrol to bring the company 
down on the apparatus floor. It is never used except in case of fire. 

4 Alarms coming direct from the building on fire. 

c A "still alarm " is an alarm given directly to the fire station, and calls 
but that company. 

6 White helmets are worn only by the Chiefs. 



Souls of Fire 45 

Adown the vistas of the bygone years 

What weary vigils, what sharp hopes and fears, 

What stern fidelity to Duty's call 

Beneath the White Cross that protects us all. 



A PRAYER 

Keep from us what disturbs the balanced mind, 
All evil thoughts and slights that are unkind : 
Let us not long for more than we require ; 
And from us blot delusions of desire. 

Let ever brave and fearless be our foes : 
Undone is he 'gainst whom the coward goes ; 
Fear whets the edge of a remorseless hate 
That kindly acts nor courteous words abate. 

Open our eyes, that we may ever see 

Sin as the root of Evil's tainting tree. 

Defend us from the pipes that tempting charm ; 

From vice all unrebuked, and bad example's harm. 

Grant us the credit of our work well done ; 
And give us strength that we may nothing shun. 
Deliver us, O God ! from the cruel hand 
Of him that can but will not understand. 

Let those of understanding have the sway, 
That life may not be wasted day by day : 
Give not, O God! dominion to the fool; 
And save us from the folly of misrule. 



46 Souls of Fire 

THE CREW OF MONOMOY 

A wild North-easter. O'er Shovelful Shoal 

The spume-white horses through the rain mists roll; 

The barge "Wadena," with the starry flag 

Set Union down, fast blowing to a rag. 

Hail to you, Eldredge, 1 and the crew of Monomoy, 
You leave a record naught can now destroy ; 
Passed though you have the watery gates to death, 
You draw from there a longer, sweeter breath. 

Up with the Immortals on the Roll of Fame 
The splintered oar has m-.rked each hero's name; 
Up with Grace Darling, 2 and the voice unknown 
That called the angles on the dial shown. 

High o'er the shrieking of the midnight squall, 
When, slowly settling, the "Captain" 3 drowned near all : 
With steady courage ; — the truest bravery, — 
You sank unseen, uncheered, beneath the sea. 

Stand in the tide rips of Eternity 
To inspire all who fight, like you, the sea ; 
Be to all sailor men a shining beacon buoy, 
Life saver Eldredge, and the crew of Monomoy. 

1 Eldredge and the entire crew of the Monomoy Life Saving 
Station were lost in a desperate attempt to rescue the crew of the barge 
" Wadena " during one of the most severe storms of late years on the New 
England coast, in March, 1902. 

2 Grace Darling, daughter of William Darling, lighthouse keeper on 
Longstone, one of the Fame Islands. On the morning of September 7, 1838, 
Grace and her father saved nine of the crew of the "Forfarshire" steamer 
wrecked among the Fame Islands opposite Bamborough Castle. 

2 The "Captain" was one of the first ironclads built by the British 
government. Built to comply with popular demand, her stability was ques- 
tioned by experts from the first. In testing her stability a dial was used at 
which one man was stationed to read the angles. "Hove down" by a severe 
squall in the Bay of Biscay, before sail could be reduced she had heeled 
beyond the point of safety, and sank. From the moment the squall struck 
the ship until she disappeared the angles were read and called calmly and 
deliberately by the man whose duty it was to do so. One of the finest and 
highest specimens of devotion to duty and cool Anglo-Saxon courage we 
find in history. 



Souls of Fire 47 

THE OLD SQUARE RIGGER 

When against the golden sky line 

Of the crimson clouded West 
Stand the square yards of a vessel 

Like a blazon of lone quest, 
O'er my heart there steals the yearning 

And the sadness of the sea, 
And that longing for my home-land 

That naught else can take from me. 

Back again I stand in boyhood 

Watching, wistful, from the shore 
Ships that pass, and ships that anchor, 

Ships that weigh and ships that moor : 
Outward bounders weighing slowly ; 

Homeward bounders anchoring; 
Outward bounders sad as Autumn ; 

Homeward bounders blithe as Spring. 

Then I see the white-winged convoy 

In the trade track off Cape Roche, 
Passing like the birds of Summer 

Ere the wintry winds approach, 
Bearing hearts that oft look backward 

To the hearths and homes astern, 
Standing in the shrines of Memory 

Decked with mistletoe and fern. 
Then, like petrels hovering lowly 

O'er a waste of stormy sea, 
Ships close hauled 'neath lower topsails 

Off the wintry "Horn" I see, 
Staggering o'er the mighty surges, 

White as drifts of driven snow, 
Reaching ever to the No'thard 

Through the gales that adverse blow. 
Old square yards, and old square riggers! 

You are passing fast away ! 
You have too much charm and glamour 

For the merchants of to-day : 
Yet again I long to see you 

Storming through the foamy brine ; 
Pointing o'er the seas of Summer, 

Bearing upward for the Line. 



48 Souls of Fire 

THE PALIMPSEST OF MEMORY 

Again to-night the olden heartache 

Weights my spirit like a stone, 
As the tide of memory surges 

Round my heart, when left alone ; 
As I wander through the gloaming 

Of the twilight's solemn shore, 
A wild elfin chorus haunts me 

From the days that are no more. 

Gone are all the crowds of daylight, 

Silence guards the sleeping camp, 
But no slumber soothes my vigil 

In the twilight of the lamp, 
With thore ghostly shadows sitting, 

Looming indistinct and vast, 
Inarticulately mumbling 

From the pages of the Past. 

Through the leaves the winds of Autumn 

Seem to whisper olden lays, 
With the sweetness of the springtime 

Of those dear, dead, other days, 
That have sped away forever, 

Utterly beyond recall, 
Save to memory or magic 

Of the even or the Fall. 

Why light up the dusty storehouse 

Of the volumes of the past? 
These new days are adding others 

Just as portentous and vast : 
Yes! Without a smile they answer, 

Each day is a living truth, 
But the roses of to-morrow 

Are not those of early youth. 

Are the flowers of the future 
Fragrant as those of the past? 

Are the shadows of the Summer 
Quite as long as springtime cast? 



Souls of Fire 49 

Would, to-day, a boundless empire 

Equal what you had from toys? 
Would the wealth of Eldorada 

Buy the zest of childish joys? 

Is there aught that will not wither? 

Is there aught defies decay? 
Is there aught to save the lovelight 

From the bourne of yesterday? 
Time, a grey and misty ocean, 

Sweeping with resistless sway, 
Blights the promise of to-morrow 

With the heartache of to-day. 

Whisper not of balmy springtime, — 

That precedes the summer's glare : 
Tell me not of golden autumn, — 

All too soon the leaves are bare, 
And the leafless branches, swaying, 

Sigh the requiem of the trees, 
For the harvests that have faded 

To the bourne of memories. 



50 Souls of Fire 

THE COMING OF COEUR DE LION 

At dusk of even, as birds homeward wing, 

So was the coming of all England's king; 

The moaning sea beat on the shelving shore 

A sobbing requiem for the host no more ; 

The cold grey sky seemed wet with unshed tears, 

Cold apprehensions and unfathomed fears, 

Whilst the wild West flamed with a lurid glare 

Of angry menace, as if it would declare : 

"Vengeance, usurping hinds, the Righter now shall 

bring; 
This stormy sunset presages the coming of the King!" 
August of mien, embodiment of power; 
The central figure at whatever hour; 
W r ar's human symbol and strength's lithesome tower, 
Whose piercing eye to naught on earth could cower : 
A king by birth, by breeding, and by heart ; 
The fittest figure that has borne the part : 
Richard of England, king by the grace of God, 
Armed at all points, at last his homeland trod! 
Without a banner or brazen alarm. 
His main dependence his own mighty arm. 
Silently praying knelt a steel-clad ring 
Around the figure of the kneeling king. 
No need of question ; none could mistake that king, 
And to him, bending, lords allegiance bring. 
Few in their number, but in courage hosts, 
Who made wrongdoers flit away like ghosts 
Before the dawning and the matin bell, 
But to return with Richard's "Fare-thee-well." 



Souls of Fire 5 1 



DEATH OF COEUR DE LION 

" We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths ; in feelings, 
not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs : 
he most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." 

— P.J. Baily. 

Stilled, stilled, at last, undaunted Lion Heart, 

That shone through kingly and through knightly part; 

That noble heart, whose equal never shone 

Even from England and the years agone ; 

Chivalry's star, shining for other days 

Across the gloom of traffic's murky ways. 

Impractically brave ! To dash and die 
On Imposition and the living lie ; — 
It is the cross that for the earnest waits : 
Seeking, to ever stand at closing gates ; 
By friends betrayed ; to be of love bereft ; 
To see hope vanish, yet with life still left. 

Oh, haughty heart ! Who felt but to despise 
The covert glances of the worldly wise ; 
And, as hope sank down with the setting sun, 
Rose, with the wind, for courses yet to run : 
Rising to shine ! Rising to never set ! 
Passing this life sans fear and sans regret! 

Ever to thee a diapason rolled 

As from harps of even, when, across the wold, 

The twilight blends the distant and the near, — 

Familiar sounds to prophecies of fear, 

And solemn chords, touched by the dreams of yore, 

Bring back bright visions of the Nevermore. 

So mutable this life that beat by beat 
Moves on to triumph or to bear defeat, 
Whether an orb, as that of day, and bright, 
Or unseen passing, meteor of a night : 
Mirror of all ; dawn, zenith, and decline, — 
A sob, a silence, — dust and earth combine. 

Note. — Richard I, King of England, gained the sobriquet of "Heart 
of the Lion" by his indomitable courage. Recklessly brave, he feared 
nothing; always leading his men in the desperate hand to hand fighting of 
those days. Despising the luxuries and enervating pleasures of the court, he 



52 Souls of Fire 



was the most chivalrous king that history tells of. Under him and King 
Philip of France the crusaders gained the greatest victories. He led the 
assault when Acre was stormed and taken with such terrible slaughter. 
Philip, becoming jealous of his fame, abandoned the crusade, and withdrew 
his army, leaving Richard to fight against overwhelming numbers. Disease 
and death destroyed the remainder, and Richard, recalled by the usurpation 
of his brother, set out to cross the continent practically alone. Recognized 
and betrayed by Leopold, Duke of Austria, into the hands of his enemy, the 
Emperor of Germany, he suffered imprisonment for two years, until released 
on payment of a heavy ransom. 

His whereabouts, it is said, was unknown until discovered by one of 
his faithful minstrels who wandered about Europe seeking him. Coming 
near the castle where he thought Richard was imprisoned, he played a well- 
known and favorite air of the King's. Richard replied with another. The 
minstrel eventually returned to England and procured the ransom, notwith- 
standing that Richard's brother had usurped the throne. Richard was killed 
by an arrow at the siege of Limoges, 1199. 

A story characteristic of the man is told. Whilst holding Richard a 
prisoner, Leopold made it a practice to visit him every day. Richard was of 
but medium stature, whilst Leopold was an exceptionally large man. One 
day Leopold spoke somewhat disparagingly of Richard's strength and stature, 
even though the fame of his exploits had filled the known world. Richard 
received the taunt in silence, seeming to evade the issue, but Leopold even 
went so far as to challenge his distinguished prisoner to a trial of buffets, i.e., 
striking with the open hand; and offered to cast lots for the first blow. 
Richard immediately accepted, waiving the chance of the lot, and giving the 
duke the advantage of the first blow, stood up to receive it. The duke, 
stepping back, put all his force into the blow, and staggered Richard across 
the cell. Richard recovered himself with unruffled composure as the duke, 
laughing, went away, promising to return the next day and let Richard have 
his turn. Richard was entirely in the duke's power, even to the extent of 
death by torture. It is more than probable that the duke considered that 
under those circumstances Richard would be careful. If he did, he reckoned 
without his host. He was not a good judge of character; he evidently did 
not know that particular man. The next day at the appointed time he came 
in smiling, saying that it was now Richard's turn. Richard's only answer 
was to step back and, with the palm of the open hand, strike him such a blow 
as to shatter the jawbone. 



Souls of Fire 53 

THE KING'S ADDRESS TO THE "ANCIENTS" 

" Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault 
If Memory o'er their tombs no trophies raise, 
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault 
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise." 

— Grey. 

These gaudy pennons that I bless, 

Though common folk abhor, 
I bid thee cherish till the dawn 

Flames o'er thy ranks of war. 

Advance them undismayed against 

Burgundy's batteries. 
Stand by them though the banquet board 

Heaves like December's seas. 

The press shall trumpet to the world 

Each well distinguished name, 
And gild the Roll of Glory with 

The glamour of thy fame. 

These flags of yours 'twere better far 

To fall beneath than lose, 
For they have braved these hundred years 

The "bunkum" and the "boose." 

I bid thee go — no forlorn hope — 

Against the Rhenish hosts : 
The heads beneath the helmets here 

May vie with oaken posts ! 

Stand to the charge though lightning palls 

Beside the ladies' eyes. 
Give toast for toast though bumpers pass 

Thick as midsummer flies. 

Retreat not though the label's gleam 

Outglows the glow of morn : 
The reaper gains more glory 

The thicker stands the corn. 

Stand to it though the bouquets fall 

Fast as December's hail : 
The hero and the hero heart 

Rise with the rising gale. 



54 Souls of Fire 

Unfurl the gastronomic flag 
Now "Bunkum" be the word. 

Now forward ! 'Neath the banner of 
The Bottle and the Bird! 



THE NIGHT PATROL 

There to sit in silence, musing, — 

Musing on the days of old, 
Faithful to the present duty 

Yet with thoughts that gleam like gold,- 
As the hand of Memory, gently, 

Draws the curtain of the past, 
Whilst he keeps a sleepless vigil 

O'er a slumbering city vast. 

Mark that bell there in the distance 

Tolling for the hour's doom, 
Seems to toll for hopes abandoned 

When bright youth was in its bloom: 
And he sighs, — as oft at even 

When the lamps are first aglow ; — 
Home is but a twilight echo 

From the days of long ago. 

And to-night appears a "detail" 

O'er the ruins of the Past, 
With the cold grey dawning tingeing 

All the future with its cast. 
You are far, he may not call you. 

Nor the green fields back again, 
Yet, to-night, it seems the wild woods 

Echo to autumnal rain. 

By their dark "night hitches" sleeping 

Men are waiting Duty's call. — 
Birth and breeding, courage, training, 

Waiting for the blow to fall. 
Who shall dare to say that money 

Pays them for the risks they run? 
No! Nor wealth of Eldorada 

Stamp a man Athena's son. 



Souls of Fire 5 5 

One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! 

'Tis the number of the box, 
Now the thunder of their coming 

As their barrier unlocks ; 
Down the pole dark figures gliding, 

Gleaming in their oilskins flash, 
As they to appointed stations 

Round the apparatus dash. 

High above the clattering hoofstrokes 

Peals the clamor of the gong, 
As they dash in headlong splendor 

The deserted streets along, 
To where that shriek tells of wild peril 

As it cuts the wintry air, 
Where the clans are gathering swiftly 

To the succor of despair. 

Heave ! — The ladderme* - * are surging : — 

"Take the stairway, Twenty-five !" 
Crash ! The door flies back in splinters 

'Neath the axeman's sturdy drive. 
Here exertions more than mortal 

Dwarf the toils of common men, — 
With the shadows on the smoke pall, 

Looming beyond mortal ken. 

Here they count no cost of doing, 

Nor the chance ere morning's light. 
When all others have forsaken, 

They but enter to t e fight, 
For the hearths and homes abandoned, 

Through the writing on the wall : 
Those who fall live on forever 

In the fanes of Honor's hall. 



56 Souls of Fire 

THE DANCE 

An invitation came last week 

From one who did a favor seek, 

It was a ticket for a ball 

And did for two round dollars call ; 

"Be sure and come," the letter said: 

I groaned, and wished my kind friend dead. 

He had for me a favor done, 
So this ordeal I could not shun ; 
These are the rules by which I go, 
As you, dear friend, already know; 
A debt incurred is but a debt unpaid ; 
A promise but fulfilment short delayed. 

Such is the case, and, being so, 

I had no option but to go, 

So straightway struggled with my coat, 

Locked up my home and took the boat ; 

To my impressions paid much heed, 

And chronicled for you to read. 

Many the mysteries of this place, 

Bearing of courts and camps a trace ; 

Airs here acquired true breeding show, 

And what but they can be well to know ! 

This is the plateau of ihe higher life 

For which part of the world wage a daily strife ! 

Music, to man and angels dear, 

Rises, in protest, from the players here. 

Maudlin musicians who for lucre blow 

Or dash their vigor through the tortured bow,- 

Orchestral seraphs, lost in soulful thought 

As to what will be for their suppers brought ! 

But shade of great king Agamemnon bold! 
Shade of what chieftain do I now behold! 
This prompter, at whose edict stern. 
So many flutter, pirouette and turn, — 
This blusterous bearer of the blatant maw 
Whose wish erratic here becomes a law! 



Souls of Fire 57 



Here maids and matrons may, with any fop, 
Perform gyrations like a patent top ; 
Here honest maidens, punished for no sin, 
May, from a chair, see others prance and spin, 
And mark, enraptured, each resounding name 
Imperishably given to the highest social fame. 

Husbandless wives, and ladies of much leisure, 
Find here the acme of delightful pleasure. 
Brisk wives may here their assignations keep 
While in cold homes their tired husbands sleep : 
What would you? Have them always dust and sweep! 
Or would you have all husbands play "Bo-Peep !" 

Men mighty in Terpsichorean lore 
Work out weird wonders upon the waxed floor; 
Youths of Apparel, quite conscious of worth, 
Intensely devoted to the great cause of Mirth ; 
Students with studies so dear to the heart 
That loath at the dawning are they to depart. 

And ever around the bright entrance way 

Stand vultures impatient for pasteboard prey. 

It costing nothing, they easily may 

Stand round and whistle their time away, 

Waiting to join the much envied gay 

When watch is relaxed and there is nothing to pay. 

And hospitality, a virtue in the great, 

Is here exemplified at so much to the plate. 

Each here may his or her poor stomach cram 

With frozen pudding, lemonade and jam. 

And old, strange birds, that may no longer stay, 

Give indigestion ere they wing away. 

But who is this dispenser of grand pleasure, 
Who ever leads when others tread a measure ; 
A wondrous figure in the very latest fashion, 
Filling all female hearts with passion : 
Magnificently mulish. — foolish, if you will, 
But the loved leader of this function still ! 



58 Souls of Fire 

Those throngs that line the inner passageway, 
And never listen, though have much to say, 
Are the wise rulers of the inner ring, 
Of which that bottle passer is the king: 
Having been proven they seldom now engage: 
Warriors, you know, in later life turn sage ! 



Knowledge is not wisdom, for it may 

Change with the fashions that prevail to-da>. 

So much I think of what I saw : 

The minstrels museless and that mighty maw; 

That much I learnt, but (with a sigh) 

May I forget it ere I die ! 

And ever since that thrilling night 
My spirit has not seemed aright. 
Such sights and sounds did not agree, 
And left my soul a legacy 
Mournful as music in an empty house; 
Sad as the morning of a night's carouse. 



Souls of Fire 59 

THE HEART'S DESIRE 

Across the tessellated pavement of the fane, 

That bore so oft the sacrificial stain, 

Shed to placate a hate of man implacable, 

Or rouse for kings the vague voice of the oracle, 

Came a bold youth clad in a shimmery mail 

That glistened like some fabulous dragon's scale, 

Striding impetuous to where, before the veil, 

The Pythoness, upstarting, grasped at the altar rail. 

Fearless he came, a king in very truth ; 

A martial Hercules in the first flush of youth, 

Whose bold high brow, deep furrowed with high care, 

Told of a spirit that a world's emprise would dare ; 

His curving chest and regal shoulder slope 

Told of a might that couH with giants cope, 

And on his haughty lip there lurked a reckless smile, 

That, with his glance, spake menace to all guile. 

Behind him followed chiefs and warrior conquerors, 

All in his train of fame the proud possessors, 

Now softly following with a downcast mien, 

They in sore doubt and tribulation seem ; 

The clash of armored limb, or clank of steel, 

Cause them to start and show the dread they feel. 

O Superstition, binding souls of men 

To idle rites, to-day, as thou didst then, 

While the straight path that leads up to God's throne 

May hence be trod undriven and alone ! 

He stood before her, now reclining in her seat, 

Her mantle grasped and brought her to her feet. 

Imperious he, she fearful in her rage, 

For passion seems intensified by age. 

"What wouldst thou, son," she, almost hissing, said. 

"The oracle," he answered, and to the altar led, 

"Thou hast the power ; call from the sacred fire 

Whatever answers to my heart's desire." 

She added fuel and, wrapped in rolling smoke. 

Then faced the king and from the altar spoke : 

"The heart's desire, that changes with each age 

And mocks alike king, warrior, clown and sage, 

Now is a love as light as eider down, 

Now is the evanescence of a crown ; 



60 Souls of Fire 

For, know ye, man must seek but never find, — 

The heart's desire is changeful as the wind. 

The heart's desire ! A shimmering bubble bright 

That, touched, is shattered from the eager sight, 

For men pursue, delve, toil, but never reach, 

And few in this let past experience teach ; 

The light they see is what they forward throw, 

And as they come it ever seems to go, 

Whilst from their tortured souls is wrung the cry : 

'My heart's desire, O God, Oh, grant me, ere I die. 



i » 



A smile curled up the young king's lips as suddenly 

He broke the thread of her wise homily : 

"None are so heartless as the aged to the hopes of youth, 

And such as you hate beauty and all truth. 

Dost grieve because thou canst not call again 

The blood of youth that throbbed almost to pain?" 

She faintly smiled, and in her dreamy look, 

They, watching, read what few young hearts can brook: 

"What, call again," she said, "the labors of a life; 

Go back to bear the evils that are rife ; 

Again to seek ; again the bitter lessons learn ; 

To take the evil and the good to spurn ; 

See hope take wing; see joy be mocked by grief; 

Bear all those ills of which the heart's are chief; 

Roll up the scroll to know less than I do; 

Blot out the scenes that memory brings to view; 

To feel afresh the stings that Time has healed; 

To have the wisdom of my years repealed ; 

For what? For ignorance, and passion's brutal spell! 

To feel again a jealous love's fierce hell ! 

No! not for worlds would I recall the past 

That found each hope more transient than the last: 

Know this, my son, who dost the words compel, 

To thee and all ambitious, thus saith the oracle: 

'Reach what thou wilt ; be never satisfied ; 

Have ever yet one wish ungratified' ; 

Go forth, my son, to triumph all thy life: 

Master the world by force and brutal strife. 

Star of Success, guiding ambitious men. 

Thy fame assured whilst scribes shall wield the pen, — 



Souls of Fire 61 

And weep at last that thou hast known the hour 
When none on earth could rival thee in power." 

Alexander, afterwards the Great, before the dawn of his world's con- 
quest, being then about twenty years of age, made a visit to Delphi to consult 
the oracle there. His violence to the Pythoness led her to say that success 
would be his, for he would success compel. 

Note. — Alexander was an idealist in everything, and peculiarly success- 
ful in all he undertook. A lover of everything that, like himself, was noble, 
generous and valiant. That he did "success compel" is evident from the 
many striking incidents of his history. As a boy, taming the horse Buceph- 
alus, an animal that none other than he could mount. His solution of the 
problem of the "Gordian Knot." A knot which secured the fastenings of 
the pole to the car that stood in an ancient temple, and which the oracle had 
declared that whosoever should unfasten should become Master of Asia. 
Alexander, having undertaken to get the pole out, and rinding the knot so 
intricate as to baffle any discovery of the ends, apprehensive that if he 
acknowledged failure he would lose the confidence of his followers, cut it 
with his sword — thus solving the problem in the same way in which he was 
to become Master of Asia. 

That it was his own personality more than anything else that secured 
success is plain — none of his generals were afterwards conspicuous for exec- 
utive ability. Even his chosen guard, the Argyraspids, who bore silver 
shields and were deemed invincible, met an ignominious fate after his death. 

His veneration and love for Homer and Euripides, and his generous aid 
to Aristotle, is sufficient proof of the bent of his mind. Royally magnani- 
mous, as his treatment of the conquered kings, Darius and Porus, show; as 
also his refusal to drink the little water obtained expressly for him, and 
hurling it to the ground, because there was not sufficient for his companions, 
when the army was crossing the Gedrosian desert. 

Haughty, he disdained to enter the Olympic games, though swifter of 
foot than most, saying: "I would, were kings my antagonists." 

His continence, simply because he feared the domination of passion, is 
one of the most instructive object lessons we possess. 

One of his council, advising something rather more politic than bold, 
said: "If I were Alexander, I would do it." "Yes, replied the king, "so 
would I were I not Alexander!" 

He replied to the arguments of his captains in favor of attacking the 
overwhelming host of the Persians at Arbela during the darkness of the 
night: "Alexander will steal no victories!" 

There is no better proof of his unflinching valor than the incident of the 
storming of the Mallian city. Left with but four others on the top of the 
walls of the citadel through the breaking of the ladders, he disdained to go 
back, but leaped down into the midst of the enemy. His veteran captains, 
Peucestas, Leonnatus and Abreas, followed. Abreas was immediately slain. 
The majestic figure of the king became a shining mark for every conceivable 
kind of missile. Stunned, his lungs pierced by an arrow, beaten down to his 
knees, he still fought on until the gates were burst asunder by his infuriated 
men. 

He died when but thirty-three years of age in the capital that he had 
won by his valor, Babylon. The greatest king on earth; idolized by his army; 
feared everywhere; leaving his kingdom with his dying whisper, character- 
istically, "to the best man!" 



62 Souls of Fire 

THE DEFENCE OF DELPHI 

Fair was the morn, and fairer yet the day, 

That lit the lines of Persia's vast array ; 

Hued as the rainbow were her ranks of war , 

Ruthless and raging as the minotaur; 

Fierce as the flames ; on blind destruction bent ; 

The lust of sacrilege within her columns pent. 

Silk, silver, steel, flash, wave, and gleam afar, 

From horse and footman, caravan and car. 

On ! On ! Victorious, they to Delphi ride. 

Roughshod, rejoicing, to the Grecian's pride. 

On ! On ! To Delphi, whence the sacred voice, 

Issuing from Parnassus, made this war their choice. 

Crowning humiliation to the Grecian land; 

Doomed for resistance to the tyrant's hand. 

Bowed o'er the mystic shrine the Pythoness addressed 

Poesy's god : "What arms avail ; the foe will soon invest: 

The temple's precincts. E'en now the echoing walls 

Resound the clamor of barbarian calls. 

What arms avail, when soon the sacred fire 

Shall be extinguished in the bloody mire 

Of slaughtered prophets and the dust of kings 

Laid for protection 'neath thy boasted wings?" 

Dark grew the fane : dim grew the altar lamp 

Through tomb-like silence and a dungeon's damp. 

Darker and dimmer loomed the oracular month 

That failing vision rendered more uncouth ; 

Then fierce the flame leaped from the gloomy shrine, 

Whilst shapes of serpents round the carvings twine, — • 

Blue, azure, purple, yellow, white and red, 

Blazed, leaped, and circled round the Pythia's head. 

Then, o'er the temple, a dread hue was spread, 

Lividly phosporescent as the ghastly dead ; 

Rocking and trembling, like a tottering child. 

Each massive column seemed possessed and wild, 

Whilst their foundations groaned as if in pain : 

Now Phantasmagoria has begun to reign. 

"Apollo's arms defend Apollo's shrine." 

Thundered and echoed down the reeling line: 

Down sank the priestess, as the gloom of death 



Souls of Fire 63 

Reft her of senses, consciousness, and breath. 

Proudly the glittering host swept round the last defile: 

Soon shall yon shrine become a funeral pile, 

Black as that cloud that o'er Parnassus lowers, 

A threat menacing e'er the rain downpours. 

On, on, they spur as murkier, gloomier yet, 

Becomes that valley, as though the sun had set; 

Low, muttering thunders fill them with alarms 

That are not banished by their clash of arms ; 

Friend looks to friend, comrade to comrade turns, 

But stranger features each in each discerns ; 

Terrors on terrors rush, thunders on thunders boom, 

On sudden crashing like the crash of doom ; 

Helpless the bridle, useless whip or rod, 

Horses and elephants cringe to the outraged god 

Who, darting flames, leaps from the mountain top 

And hurls destruction to the dreadful spot ; 

Olive and tree trunk, boulder, hail and fire 

Rain down the hillside, till a bloody mire 

Stands where a host had stood transfixed with fear 

And met their doom grasping the useless spear. 

Note. — During the Persian invasion of Greece under Xerxes, a Persian 
column was detached to destroy the temple at Delphi. They advanced, 
burning and destroying everything in their path. In answer to the query of 
the priests, the oracle is reported to have responded: "Apollo's arms defend 
Apollo's shrine!" 

Caught in the defiles of Parnassus during a terrific thunder storm, the 
Persian column was practically exterminated by an avalanche of boulders from 
the hills around. 

As usual, many prodigies were reported. How much was due to the 
jugglery of priestcraft, the patriotism of the people, and chance, has never 
been determined. 



64 Souls of Fire 

PAUL JONES 

" There is a tide in the affairs of men 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries: 
And we must take the current when it serves 
Or lose our ventures." — Shakespeare. 

PART I 

Over the wide, wild, restless sea, 

Like the stormy albatross, 
I have winged my way in search of prey 

'Neath the Pole Star and the Cross. 

On the misty banks of the Newfoundland, 
Off the treacherous Spanish Main, 

I have lived a life of stormy strife 
With the buccaneers of Spain. 

In the spotless white of a man-o'-war, 

In the dungaree of trade, 
In every clime the powder grime 

Upon my cheek has laid. 

Serving my time from boy to man 

On the bosom of the deep, 
My ready blade too often made 

A harvest none could reap. 

On Agulhas Bank ; off the stormy Horn, 

Where'er a ship might be, 
I took my stand far off the land 

And taxed the ships at sea. 

When balmy rest was needed sore 
For the hidden isles I steered: 

The nodding palm had soothing balm 
For the stout hearts of the feared. 

Again the well-trimmed sails would feel 
The Trade Winds' tempered gale, — 

The white squall's strain, or the hurricane, 
Or the frost king's blast of hail. 



Souls of Fire 65 

We seized our pleasure as we could, 

And royally feasted we : 
Oftener a feast was not the least 

For which we swept the sea. 

Often eluding swift-winged death, 

Who comes to find me gone, 
I've sung with maids of many shades, 

Though never loved but one. 

In the quiet of a country-side 

There dwelt a gentle maid, 
Whose winsome face and quiet grace 

From memory ne'er shall fade. 

I grew with her from childhood, 

And nursed a love that grew ; 
'Mid winter's gloom or flower's bloom 

Our love found life anew. 

We parted with a handclasp, 

Our lips had never met ; 
A soft "Good bye," a lingering sigh, 

A look I'll ne'er forget. 

I roamed long o'er the waters 

Ere I sailed home again, 
A name of fear — a buccaneer, — 

A cargo of great gain. 

I hastened o'er the village green 

With steps of eager haste. 
Ah, love, at last our parting's past, 

The years of barren waste ! 

She was standing by the hearthside, 

Her starry eyes looked sad, 
My outstretched hand she lightly scanned, 

The look near drove me mad. 

"Bold deeds are yours," she calmly said, 

"Right beaten down by force ; 
Thy dreaded name a burning shame ; 

God stay thee in thy course." 



66 Souls of h ire 

A gift of pearls from my strong hand 
Lay gleaming at her feet, 

She noticed not the prize I got, 
The plunder of a fleet. 

I know the sheer of sabre stroke, 
The fiery wound of shot, 

But ne'er before such anguish sore 
Had fallen to my lot. 

"Far o'er the Western Ocean 
A new-born nation's van, 

Defying might, maintains a fight 
For the equal rights of man. 

"I go to fight for freed jm, 
And ere thy hand I claim, 

From yonder bark I'll set my mark 
High on the walls of Fame." 

Her eyes lit with returning hope, 
Her stately head bowed low ; 

She turned aside and tried to hide 
The blood's swift ebb and flow. 

The topsails soon were sheeted home, 
The capstan bars were manned ; 

'.Neath shortened sail we faced the gale 
And stood out from the land. 

Vainly the breaking crests would race 

Along her heeling form, 
She felt the blast and followed fast 

The black wings of the storm. 



PART II. 

I passed from out their senate 
As proud as man might be, 

For they had made my proffered blade 
A guardian of their sea. 



Souls of Fire 67 

The starry flag first floated 

From the truck at my masthead. 
Cheered by the crew that challenge flew, 

"Who dares upon me tread?" 

I swept the broad Atlantic, 

Nor spared the foeman's shore. 
For many crowns I taxed his towns 

From Scotland to the Nore. 

We sighted the homebound Baltic fleet 

With Flamborough Head alee. 
Two frigates bold their courses hold, 

The traders homeward flee. 

"Muster the crew to quarters, 

And the decks for action clear; 
Each eager foe shall feel my blow, 

A kingdom quake with fear !" 

A multitude of country folk 

Watched from the hills around; 
Ten thousand eyes saw with surprise 

My arms by Victory crowned. 

We soon engaged the foremost foe, 

The broadside guns soon roared, 
And as we passed, her splintered mast, 

A wreck, crashed overboard. 

Her consort now had joined the fight, 

Aboard she almost came, 
But, missing stays, she helpless lays 

Wrapt in a cloud of flame. 

Aloft a snarl of shattered spars 

Swung wildly to and fro, 
Along my decks the guns were wrecks, 

And flames burst forth below. 

"Ahoy! Have you surrendered?" 

I smiled and trained a gun. 
Then lashed her fast to my own mast. 

"Why! I've not yet begun!" 



68 Souls of Fire 

I never did surrender, 

Nor know when I was beat. 
Came great or small, I took them all. 

Death is not a defeat ! 

The foeman's guns are sinking uo. 

I lay along to board. 
"Boarders away ! No foe can stay 

Our onslaught with the sword !" 

Our blazing bark gave light enough 

For the grim work in hand. 
The stubborn foe we drove below 

After a desperate stand. 

Stout hearts and steady hands had they 
Who fought for England's crown, 

Out in the dark our shattered bark, 
A fiery wreck went down. 

The clouded moon now partially lit 

A scene of ghastly dread, 
From side to side the heaving tide 

Washed to and fro the dead. 

Long days we helpless rolled about 
The storm-tossed German Sea. 

Wild Northern gales swept through oui sails 
Till we gained the Texel's lee. 

The English captain knighted was 

For the brave fight he made. 
"Upon the main he yet may gain 

An Earldom from my blade !" 

PART III. 

In the twilight of a winter's eve 

I drew near home once more, 
Behind me lay a weary way, 

Deep drifts of snow before. 



Souls of Fire 69 

Hard by the churchyard on the hill 

A horseman's voice I heard. 
The form I knew, my sword I drew, 

And waited for the word. 

"Rival in all I hold most dear; 

And foe of this, my land, 
Victor at sea, you here may be 

Subdued by my right hand." 

"Boast then through coming years," I said, 

"You raised your country's ban." 
With equal speed each left his steed 

And straight the fight began. 

We fought knee deep in drifted snow, 

To fence we neither tried ; 
Each thrust or blow stained red the snow 

Till we sank side by side. 

I staggered up and kn It beside 

The body of my foe. 
"Of those I seek I beg you speak 

Ere I for aid will go." 

"Beneath the cross beside the wall 

In yon dank churchyard's soil 
There buried lies the one you prize, 

The guerdon of your toil." 

I made my way unsteadily 

To where the marble cross, 
Austere and cold, too truly told 

The story of my loss. 

Oh ! blinding tears of vain regret 

For what was but a dream, 
Yet must forever and forever 

Be my soul's sweetest theme ! 



70 Souls of Fire 



THE LIBRARY 

" I would not waste my spring of youth in idle dalliance. I would 
plant rich seeds to blossom in my manhood, and bear fruit when I 
am old." — Hillhouse. 

Alma Mater, loved forever, 

Memory like a rainbow gleams 
With the treasures you have added 

To the treasure-house of dreams. 
Be remembered when we step back 

From the turmoil of the strife 
To the contemplative grandeur 

Of thy calmly gentle life. 

Many by thee are inspired 

By the deathless lore o r song 
Echoing from the other ages 

Truths that live despite of wrong, 
Who shall hark ofttimes at even, 

When the soul is soothed to rest, 
To the songs of the immortals 

From the Islands of the Blest. 

'Neath thy care the wise and gentle 

Whisper of the higher life; 
And the bravely noble, knighting. 

Bids them guard it through the strife ; 
In the field or by the campfire, 

Though the days be drear and long, 
You will give them, for the glamour, 

All the loathsomeness of wrong. 

Philosophic contemplation 

For the rancor of the world. 
Custom's idols from their niches 

In the dust of ages hurled. 
For the blind gods of their passions 

Dimly frame the God Unknown. 
For the terrors of their childhood 

Sweetest happiness alone. 

For thy quietude has fallen 
Over many a troubled soul, 



Souls of Fire 71 

Vexed and swept by gusts of passion 

That appear beyond control. 
Still, the quiet of the cloister 

Is not fitting for the fight ; 
Action, like the sun upstarting, 

Breaks the silence of the night! 

The library is the university of the self-sustained ; the Temple 
of Reason, bearing the Beacon of Progress ; and upon it beat in vain the 
thundering surges of the bigot, the ignorant, and the superficial. 



THE ALBATROSS 

The King of the Sea is the albatross 1 

From the "Cape" 2 to the "Thirty-third," 3 

The winged genii of the "Cross" 4 
Is the tameless ocean bird. 

His home is the surge of the stormy zone ; 

His joy is a Cape Horn gale : 
He comes on the breath of the ocean's moan 

At the sign of a shortened sail. 

He circles the trucks, and the sailors say: 
"Those who go from the yards at night 

Are given forevermore \o play 

O'er the crests that are breaking white." 

1 The albatross is an immense sea-bird whose wheeling flights are the 
most graceful and majestic motions possible to conceive. 

2 It is seen only in southern latitudes from about the latitude of Cape 
Horn to the 3 "Thirty-third" parallel of south latitude. There are many 
superstitions among sailors as to the albatross. Coleridge, in the "Ancient 
Mariner," has caught the mystery and awe of the sea as none other has ever 
done. 

4 The Southern Cross, a constellation visible only in southern latitudes. 
It is very brilliant and almost forms an accurate cross. 



12 Souls of Fire 

DEDICATION OF A GYMNASIUM 

Haunt of the strong, where youth, untainted yet, 

The training needed for the world may get, 

Strong, steady limbs, and stronger, steadier hearts, 

Lithe, perfect manhood in their every parts : 

To face oppression and for freedom fight; 

God and their country, the emblem, and the right: 

Soldiers undaunted, honored 'neath the sod ; 

Soldiers, and Christians, marching on to God. 

Men at the throttle when the haunting dread 

Of swift destruction chills them like the dead; 

To be averted ere it is too late 

But by the magic right hand at the gate, 

True timed and strong, learned in thy feats of sleight 

That train the hand and magnify the sight. 

Thus in the everyday, in this and other lands, 

Pale weakness falters with unpractised hands, 

While the trained knight of strength and steady eye 

Leaps to the breach, defends it, or dares die. 

Gymnasia, teach what gold can never buy: 

The grace of carriage and the steady eye. 

Across thy beams no gold can ever span ; 

Upon thy floor man never equals man. 

Teach these now blooming in the flush of youth 

Stern feats of manhood ground in simple truth. 

Stamp on their forms the mien of olden kings, 

Give to their actions the wide sweep of wings. 

Teach them that health and beauty are not bought: 

And that 'tis purity that radiates pure thought. 

Teach them the law that all transgressors whet: 

The crown of health, the diadem of sweat. 

Labor an 1 longer life : labor and happy days : 

Disease the harpy of smooth, easy ways: 

Disease the scourge to bring us back to right: 

Knowledge of hygiene the dawn that breaks the night: 

Temperate living, the fragrant offering sweet 

From man to God, and for that God most meet. 



Souls of Fire 73 

TO MUSIC 

Thou mighty power whose breath sweeps from life's 

chords 
The lover's lutings or the clash of swords, 
And, like the ambient air, can penetrate 
The weightiest councils of the mightiest state ; 
And, like the tempest, can hearts agitate, 
Or soothe them dreaming as thou soft vibrate: 
Thus let me dream and softly memorize 
The times I heard thee from beyond the skies, 
Caught by rapt minstrels looking up to God, 
Shining archangels who this earth have trod 
Rapt in their inspiration as in a cloud, 
With fairy gifts and angel joys endowed, 
Flaming like meteors whose reflections light 
Whoso can love them and can hear aright : 
Harmony's masters whom the Muse has sent 
To soothe sad souls in fleshly prisons pent 
W T ith draughts ambrosial from the living streams 
That flow perpetual from the realm of dreams 
Beyond the sunset, where the world's unrest 
Is awed to silence in the Gardens of the Blest, 
To be forgotten in the ineffable placidity 
That marks the cycles of Eternity. 

All lover's partings since the world began 
Were voiced at once when those wild numbers ran, 
Where old loves linger where the tides of memory swirl, 
Wailed in the sobbing sweetness of the sad "Bohemian 
Girl." 

True-hearted love, art thou forevermore 

Locked in the tower of "II Trovatore," 

To end in blood that a great sacrifice 

Free poured for thee, yet could not quite suffice. 

May God requite those who would break a heart 
In wanton folly by the coquette's art, 
And, like "Martha," pluck from its fragrant bed 
The flower left sorrowing for her kindred dead. 



74 Souls of Fire 

Chime out, ye chimes of sunny Normandy, 
When the lost heir shall come from o'er the sea ! 
Chime down the avaricious that, like ghouls of night, 
Would keep possessions from the heirs and right. 

Is simple truth with "Maritana" lost, 

And he who sought her reckless of the cost, — 

Reckless alike of kingly threat and frown, 

And took her though beneath the shadow of a crown? 

Sweet captain's daughter, whom the pride of caste 
Could not restrain love's limpid stream to taste ; 
Live with thy love among those hearts of oak 
More truly tender than thine own gentlefolk. 

Kneel, gentle virgin, at the altar stair, 

Sob out thy sorrow in thy ''Maiden's Prayer." 

Blend in thy prayer thy piety and love 

Till it shall seem an anthem from above. 

Sweet "Alice, where art thou?" Art thou to be found? 
Or art thou truly but the shadow of a sound? 
So many seek thee — but so few shall find, — 
A sweetheart gentle, beautiful and kind. 

Sorrow will sob like the waves of the sea, 

"La Traviata," when I think of rliee: 

Sorrow and sea: always the sorrowful sea, 

Now thy wild music comes pealing to me, 

Quaint, weird and mournful — I let the pen fall, 

For the songs of sad strangers to the clink of the pawl, 

Throng round with suggestions so many and fast 

That my pen is unequal to take from the past 

The songs I have loved, and the bars that have seemed 

The voices of angels I heard when I dreamed. 



Souls of Fire 75 

THE STREETS OF BALTIMORE 

( To the memory of Edgar Allan Poe) 

Would that I could catch your musings 

As you wandered through the night 
Seeking for the unforgotten, 

Though past earthly aid to right. 
Lost, abandoned, hopeless, helpless ! 

Save to that cry of "Lenore," 
Moaning, sobbing, pleading, pealing! 

From the stones of Baltimore. 

Oh ! the heartache and the anguish 

That was given to your song 
By the tide of Fate besetting 

And the bitterness of wrong. 
Feverish with the fame of genius, 

Haunted by the "Nevermore." 
Pensive, burning, spectral, wandering 

In the streets of Baltimore ! 

Broadcloth vultures ! God defend us 

From Respectability, 
Snug, and deek, and deaf as adders 

To the inner honesty. 
May thy curse of anguish crush them, 

Though their prayers united roar, 
Blending with the boom of traffic 

In the streets of Baltimore! 

Yet, perhaps, the winds of even, 

As she listened by the shore, 
Crept across the chords of Memory 

And the sad heart of "Lenore." 
And the song that made you famous 

Through your mystic, minstrel lore, 
Though unvoiced, to her heart echoed 

From the streets of Baltimore. 



76 Souls of Fire 



AN ETHER DREAM 

A shuddering soul from the world of life 
Awe-stricken stood, with amazement rife, 
Frozen with fear on the brink of Time, 
And stunned by the roar of a measureless rhyme. 

He saw with amazement the planets throw 
Their various hues on the world below, 
Throwing, half mockingly, down to the earth 
Time, Opportunity, Chances, and Birth. 

Like the sword-points of God far stars looked down 
And a silent menace to the lower worlds frown, 
Whilst the blinking blaze of the ether light 
Filled the earthbound soul with a nameless fright. 

He saw through the clouds of the ages past, 
Inscrutably smiling, and working fast, 
The figure of Science there laying bare 
The secrets of ages, earth, water and air. 

How simple the future that fitted the past! 
How plain the beginning that forever shall last ! 
Inscrutably smiling, how little they know ! 
How great the pretence of the searchers below ! 

He crang to the life that was slipping away. 

And strove through his fear to Our Father to pray; 

Then, beaten at last in unequal strife, 

Still conscious, he sped to the source of all life. 

A fiery atom that whirled through space, 

Then back to the earth, would its pathway retrace 

On the belt of life that forever runs 

From the earth to the farthest of twinkling suns. 

Then motion ceased. 'Twas the lifeless world 

Where the conscious atoms through space are hurled. 

No hope! No hold on the whirling shell ! 

Then downward through space, wildly shrieking he fell. 



Souls of Fire 77 

"Death under ether, quite a curious case ! 
Observe the wild horror deep stamped on the face !" 
Inscrutably smiling, the surgeons look on 
The body from which life forever has gone. 



AN IDYLL OF KNIGHTLY DAYS 

" E'en as the falcon when the wind is fair 
Close to the earth on lagging pinions goes. 
But when against her beats the adverse air 
She breasts the gale and rises as it blows." 

They had long loved, and now at last were met 

Amid the shadows just as the sun had set, 

And stood where forked the parting of two ways, — 

Content in silence clasping hands to gaze : 

What need of word when love lights up the eye, 

And all the soul goes trembling on the sigh? 

Love held them mute and linked them with a chain 

That neither wished nor hoped to part again. 

They parted, and a different way each took, 
Yet, still half lingering, often backward look, 
And stop and ponder lest aught be forgot, 
Or thoughts intrude and looks or gestures blot. 

He was a knight unlanded and scarce tried 

Save in the skirmish and the midnight ride, 

Yet known and feared amid surprise and foray, 

And skilled to joust for honor in the tourney. 

She was the daughter of an old chieftain great, 

High in the Council, lord of large estate, 

And though they loved and often after met, 

He felt the difference which she would fain forget. 

Soon spread the tidings of a great tournament, 
Where any knight, upon a due arrangement, 
The lists might enter, watched by the fair above, 
And tilt for honor or the glance of lady love. 
Rupert, first cousin to the lady of the tale, 
Long sought to lead her to the altar rail. 
Repulsed, his eye had read the story right, 
And challenged Robert in the tournament to fight. 



78 Souls of Fire 

The hour arrived. Each spurred fast down the field, 

Hate in their eyes and on the arms they wield ; 

Rupert's great bulk slight Robert overthrew 

And left him victor, worst wounded of the two. 

At even all were bidden to the banquet hall 

And the grand feast was followed by a ball, 

Where those who ran the hazard of the lance 

Xow crowned the day with music and the dance. 

Rupert's great joy flamed from his flashing eye, 

And through the hall his boast rang oft and high. 

His wound forgotten, or remembered but with joy, 

For the keen pang was triumph's sweet alloy. 

Robert, unseen, watched from the throng apart ; 

''Failed, and failed signally," beat out his bitter heart; 

"A chance, yes, chance; but failure just the same! - ' 

Youth will not see that one must lose the game ! 

There came but one to seek him in his haunt. 

Her eye sought his without the trace of taunt; 

She spake him kindly — kindlier than before, — 

For woman's love shows in distress the more. 

He answered calmly, for the gulf was bridgeless now, 

Save that the years brought laurels to his brow. 

It was the stroke of Love's sad passing bell 

She heard when he soft whispered "Fare-thee-well." 

The training of her life and all her maiden pride 

Scarce had command the anguish of her heart to hide. 

With voice almost inaudible, but with unfailing eye, 

She asked the time and for what reason why. 

"Ere from the East shall flame the rising sun 

I go to seek what from the wars are won ; 

We are not equal, Star of my Life, and so, 

I kiss thy hand and to the camp will go." 

"If so thou wilt, I cannot stay," she said, 

"But here I wait till gathered with the dead ; 

You have the quest of glory, but what is left to me 

But to be patient, hoping, and daily pray for thee?" 

"You have," he answered, "kindred and young life; 

Long years, perhaps, to be some noble's wife : 

Love will surround thee ever, then as now, 

When plumed heads low shall to thy beauty bow." 

Each bowed, and love looked from sad, misty eyes : 

It seemed a sacrilege that music then should rise. 



Souls of hire 79 

Still she remained till the bridge clattering fell 
And his horn's call bade her a last farewell. 

Gentle before, she seemed an angel now, 

Who for long days did o'er her missal bow. 

Content in the dim chapel she would stay 

From early dawn till the last light of day. 

There, where the tinted streams of sunlight fell, 

And, flaming, crowned her from the glorious oriel, 

Ethereally rapt, far from this world away, 

She would for days before the altar stay. 

And often after vespers lay she there 

Prone in mute adoration at the altar stair. 

Or, sobbing prayers, with lifted, streaming eyes, 

She looked away beyond the sunset skies, 

To where with Christ and the Madonna dear 

A steel-clad knight forever would appear, 

Oft looking back from the steep path he trod 

Up near and with the angels and to God. 

Day after day she hoped, and hoping, prayed, 

That God would comfort her for hope delayed, 

And grant her kisses on his lips to rain, 

And let her clasp him close to her heart again: 

Not in this world, but where, forevermore, 

Bloom deathless asphodels on God's eternal shore. 

Nine times the snows enshrouded dying years, 
And eight times Spring smiled through the April tears. 
All things must change that by Time's stream abide, 
As all at last must sink beneath its tide. 

A full moon drifted through a cloudy night, 
Now wanly beaming, and now out of sight. 
Earth all in silence, save when revelry 
Sounded and ceased from some near hostelry. 
When from the distance the slow cadence broke 
Of a tired hoof-beat's stumbling, clattering stroke. 
The trampling of a horse bestrode by mailed knight 
Armed for the wars, with arms no longer bright, 
With plumeless helm bent o'er the saddle bow 
He seemed indifferent where the steed might go, 



80 Souls of Fire 

But sudden drew erect and gazed away intent 

Over the boundary of the vale's extent, 

Where a lone light in a high castle far 

Shone through the darkness like a stationed star: 

The hall of her to his sad heart more dear 

Than all earth's joys or Honor's high career. 

Soon bowed again, he no faint rustle hears, 

When sudden from the shade a shape appears. 

The startled charger, snorting, sidewise strains, 

Whilst the roused rider seeks the fallen reins 

As a veiled lady on a small palfrey white 

Reined in beside the war horse of the knight. 

She grasped the bridle and said, "Follow me, 

For I a hall have long prepared for thee ; 

Let me to-night have thee \, ithin my care, 

And in the lists my token thou shalt bear." 

"I bear no token," he made answer, gloomily, 

"Such things are past and come no more to me : 

I take your quarrel, be it in the right, 

And will defend it in to-morrow's fight." 

"Forget," she said, "why mourn a wasted past? 

Seize what you may while yet your life may last; 

Dream not of what, for thee, can never be, 

Nor love one who has long been lost to thee." 

He shook the reins impatiently, and said : 

"So must it be till I from life am sped. 

Once I stood face to face with love sublime, — 

And still through memory comes the silver chime. 

Life's sands are running swiftly, soon I may 

Join her I love beyond this bleak world's day. 

I have been true. I cannot falter now, 

Nor falsely, at a shrine I love not, bow. 

The oft-worn helmet has chafed thin my hair, 

War's toils have left me haggard, gaunt and spare; 

Love has gone on and passed me with a sigh, 

And I am left but to fight on and die. 

I shall not fail, nor even look a lie. 

I cannot love save her no longer nigh ; 

Nor read reproach in those eyes angel bright 

That watch me through the silence of the night. 

Unhand the bridle! T must hence away. 

That I may rest me ere to-morrow's fray, 



Souls of Fire 8 1 

Nor stand here thus, spellbound, thou witch, by thou 

Who can the past call and bring even now, 

And summon long, sad, dreary years agone 

To, silent, rise and curse me one by one, 

And drive me back, and bring me even to 

That last dim twilight where we said 'adieu.' " 

His heedless glance swept round to where she sat, — 

Before it had passed by, around, through, never at, — 

But now it seems to pierce the veiling folds, 

And to recoil at what it there beholds. 

What witchery of the mind! What phantom of the 

night ! 
What past belief greets his untrusted sight! 
Bright as an angel, springing from the dead : 
Sweet as deliverance when Hope has fled ! 
"Faithful thou art, as I have been," she said, 
"Past are the years of doubt and anxious dread ; 
My chosen knight, long wandering far from me, 
And whom my love has called from o'er the sea. 
Thou comest well in time of my sore need, 
For now I am the prey of Rupert's greed ; 
He has grasped all, unmerciful and cruel, 
His peers decree that woman may not rule. 
His creatures they, steeped with him in his sin, 
Thus they decree, he standing next of kin, 
And does by this great tourney celebrate 
His advent to my father's large estate." 
Robert replied : "Thy quarrel rests with me, 
For who is thine must be my enemy. 
I may not hold and tell thee what I would, 
But each old vow the battle shall make good." 
She led the way to a firm pitched marquee, 
Decked with the pride of his emblazonry, 
And bid him enter, for it was the home 
Wrought by her hands whilst he afar did roam. 
The knight first stripped the trappings from his steed, 
Tended with care and saw to every need ; 
Then long they talked, till, at her firm behest, 
He laid his armor off, prepared to rest. 
She told him he would find within a cot, 
And pointed to the lamp. He entered not, 



82 Souls of Fire 

But lay him down upon the outer ground 

And instant sank into a sleep profound. 

Through the long watches of remaining night 

She, softly singing, burnished armor bright, 

That the next day might see her chosen knight 

Flame, like a meteor, bright beaming through the fight. 

An encamped host of warriors wild lay round, 
Who followed on Christendom's chiefs renowned, 
Who came from far with retinue and state 
To view the tourney or to participate. 

The day was passed in deeds of knightly skill, 

The melee ending, such the prince's will. 

Twelve knights with Rupert entered on the field ; 

Thirteen opposed, one with deviceless shield. 

The trumpets sounding, the swift ranks advance, 

And meet impetuous on the splintering lance. 

The unknown knight and Rupert are apart, 

But Rupert sees him through the struggle dart. 

His horse is down, but through the battle line, 

He storms like Cacique through the Indian brine, 

His axe, like lightning, leveling a way 

To Rupert, yet unhorsed amid the fray. 

Rupert observed, and, seizing on the chance, 

Drove in upon him with a well-aimed lance, 

The axe shore through the lance, returned with speed 

And dashed the rider senseless irom his steed, 

Just as a mace struck Robert to the ground, 

Where, as he fell, he lay till later found. 

In a low chamber, lit by one taper's flame, 

He wm, when, with sigh, his senses came. 

His eyes swept o'er the waving tapestry 

That the night-wind swayed strange and fitfully, — 

The figures wrought in gold and silver thread 

Seemed skeletons that gibbered from the dead. 

Soon, in their circuit, his eyes wondering fall 

Upon the embrasure in the massy wall, 

Through which he sees the calm stars shining clear 

Like guiding lights to Avalon across Night's fairy mere 



Souls of Fire 83 

That lure him on to leave this world of strife 

For the blest isles beyond the bounds of life. 

A long-drawn sigh caused him to look around 

To where his lady sat in reverie profound, 

Her eyes fixed on him, shining through her tears, 

That told of grief and her heart's boding fears. 

He stretched his hand toward her, when a sound without 

Took from her face each vestige of a doubt. 

"If thou hast strength," she said, "now must you fly. 

Hide thee among the turret ledges high ; 

Thy foe is near thee, waiting at the door 

To finish what he strove to do before." 

"But thou," he said. She answered: "Have no fear; 

Here have I stayed for many a dreary year. 

He dares not harm whom he has wronged so much. 

He scarce dares look ; much less with hand to touch." 

He weakly rose to do as she had said, 

But scarce could stand, so dizzy was his head. 

No arms had he, and, partially stripped of mail, 

To wait there thus could be of no avail. 

Without, a whisper and a stealthy tread, 

Told him they came to send him to the dead. 

"Haste ! haste !" she whispered, pointing to the way, 

"Conceal thyself, and in concealment stay 

Until I come to guide thee hence away, 

Thy rescuer, I, before the break of day." 

He scarce had gone before the foe were there, 

And, in haste searching, found the narrow stair. 

But one could pass — one thrust her quick aside, 

And reached the door that she had tried to hide. 

Wildly she shrieked the name of Robert dear, 

And he, swift turning, found the assassin near; 

Love gave him strength, he grappled with his foe, 

And, locked in hate, close to the brink they go. 

Within the chamber Rupert faced the maid, 
Hateful in triumph he ; she, as yet, undismayed. 
Fear clutched her heart, but looked not from her face, 
She would not show she hopeless deemed the case. 
Friends had she here and all might yet be well: 
Hope never leaves the circle of love's spell. 



84 Souls of Fire 

Rupert approached, sure that the end was near: 

Her knight was doomed; what had he now to fear? 

Beyond man's aid, she dumbly stood at bay, 

As to her God in silence she did pray. 

A sudden scream of terror pierced the night ; 

A falling form plunged by the embrasure's light, 

An instant's silence, then a crash below, 

And Rupert, laughing, lightly turned to go — 

Tried over much, her spirit, with a sigh, 

Slipped from the life that held for her no tie. 

The next forenoon, in answer to the call, 

The peers assembled in the council hall. 

None disputatious; each emulous to please; 

Tuned to accord, like winds among the trees. 

Rupert his grief in studied words expressed, 

Whilst, .-.eemingly, his tears were scarce repressed. 

He told them of the faithless stranger knight 

Who had been taken from the field of fight 

And, in this castle, tended with the care 

Due to the helpless by the tender fair; 

And, to requite them, through the night had fled, 

Leaving one friend and one fair maiden dead, 

And, in conclusion, Rupert gave a name 

Of which all present oft had heard the fame. 

An angry murmur first expressed their rage, 

Then loudly each swore this foe to engage. 

The lofty hall re-echoed with the shout 

Of valorous defiance of the sycophantic rout. 

The day was warm, and, in the court without, 

Rupert's retainers had placed the seats about, 

And, after conference, the knights assembled there 

To enjoy the feast spread in the open air. 

And oft the name of Rupert filled the toast, 

And often he made warlike themes his boast, 

Basely reviling he who dared not stay, 

And swearing yet that craven knight to slay, 

When, in the midst of their carousal loud. 

They heard a call that seemed from some high cloud. 

Each started to his feet, relinquishing the cup, 

Amazement in the eyes that each directed up, 



Souls of Fire 85 

For there, high up, where none but eagles were secure, 

A figure strode with reckless footsteps sure, — 

The cloak that streamed straight on the whistling wind 

Seemed a winged demon urging from behind. 

Now on the dizzy brink they see him fearless stand 

And hurl, far out, some o"bject from his hand. 

It curved and fell, now closed, now opened wide, 

Whilst those who watched fell back with hasty stride, 

As his bright gauntlet with a crash did fall 

That bid defiance to them one and all. 

The figure disappeared, and hasty search was made, — 

But for their searching they were ill repaid. 

So soon the heralds from the hall went down 

To sound a proclamation through the town, 

Bidding who would the trial of arms endure 

Appear in person on the third day, sure. 

'Tis midnight, and in the chapel's gloom austere 

A knight is kneeling by a snow-white bier ; 

His frame now still, now shakes with agony, 

As thus he whispers incoherently : 

"No more I tremble as thou drawest near, 

Nor does my breath come laboring for my fear. 

It may be for the best ; though hard to deem it so : 

I should rejoice, but cannot for my woe. 

We knew not what would part us were we twain, 

But now I know we ne'er can part again : 

'Tis thine to be my common care above ; 

'Tis thine to be loved ; and 'tis mine to love." 

He rose and passed the night beside the bier 

That held the form of her to him so dear, 

Or, bowed in prayer, within the gloomy nave, 

He clasped to heart the wroughten scarf she gave; 

Till dawning came, when, in its pearly grey, 

He pressed her lips, and, sobbing, rode away. 

Arms and a steed he found close to his hand, 

For they pertained to one of Rupert's band, 

Who, knighted yesterday, should, through the night, 

Have kept a vigil o'er his armor bright, — 

But the carousal ended in a sleep 

That gave a foe the arms he could not keep. 



86 Souls of Fire 

The sun flamed down from an unclouded sky 
Upon a concourse vast of lowly and of high. 
The lists prepared, alone one champion stood 
Against seven knights his charges to make good. 
The trumpet sounded, and the fight began 
That ere the noon six bloody courses ran. 
Six of the seven unhorsed and dying fell 
Before the arm that seemed invincible, 
And as they fell one threat rang hollowly : 
"One nearer yet, my hated foe, to thee." 
The heralds then, at the stern judges hest, 
Proclaimed a truce that all concerned might rest ; 
And when from noon two hours had sunk the sun 
The last encounter in this cause should run. 

The high refreshment seek, the lowly stay. 

The heralds come to lead that knight away : 

No rest seeks he. Motionless and alone, 

He and his steed seem vengeance carved in stone. 

The music of the troubadors enlivens the gay scene 

Till in the distance far a priestly line is seen ; 

All sounds are hushed as the slow-tolling bell 

Sends on the breeze the hopeless funeral knell. 

A tremor, scarce perceptible to sight, 

Shook for an instant the pennon of the knight. 

Perhaps the breeze then shook that pennon red, — 

Silent he stood, nor even turned his head. 

Slowly the shadow creeps across the dial 

Till past the hour of appointed trial. 

Great clouds are sweeping from the windy West 

With all the menace of a stormy quest. 

Against the palisades the people press 

And bend them with the unaccustomed stress, 

When a great bustle and a busy hum 

Tell them that Rupert to the lists has come. 

Well-wishers throng to wring his mailed hands: 

For many friends have rulers of wide lands. 

His arms are rich, as well beseems his state, 

Though ill according with his look of hate. 

The circle breaks when the loud trumpet's blare 

Reverberates "To battle" through the oppressive air. 



Souls of Fire 87 

Adown the lists, like thunderbolts, they course, 
And each stout lance is splintered with the force, 
And as they pass like flaming, shooting stars, 
A dextrous thrust breaks Rupert's vizor bars. 
One wheels and would renew the fight again, 
The other, faint, clings to his horse's mane: 
Robert, at last, has taught his foe that they 
May not fight least who sometimes kneel to pray. 

Retainers bear their master from the field, 

And to the victor horse and armor yield. 

He waves them off, as, through the falling rain, 

He rides away to seek the wars again. 

They bear proud Rupert to his usurped hall, 

And soon the leach comes answering to the call. 

He turns aside and slowly shakes his head. 

"Better by far," he says, "were he now dead ; 

To make acknowledgment my soul abhors, 

But he who struck learnt in the Eastern wars. 

No skill can remedy, inert as death, 

Though conscious, he may draw for years his breath." 

And so it was. He lived for years in pain, 

But never mortal heard his voice again. 

It is at sunset, on a hill in Palestine, 

Close by the mount that bore the Cross divine, 

A band of Christians have through the long day 

Kept the great host of Saladin at bay. 

They were the vanguard of Christendom bold, 

And first Jerusalem's glory to behold, 

Now all but one in their last sleep are lain 

Surrounded by a hecatomb of slain. 

But one still holds his drawn sword in his hand, 

Proudly erect beside the banner of his band. 

He is the last, the bravest, and the best, 

Of all who sought Jerusalem the Blest. 

"Yield," said Saladin, "for thy fame is reared, 

And such as thou are ill from this world spared." 

He trusted not his voice to answering, speak, 

For, wounded oft, he was now faint and weak. 



88 Souls of Fire 

His shattered armor streams a gushing flood 

That tells the passing of his heart's best blood. 

Mutely his gesture does the King defy. 

"Who, seeing, marks it with approving sigh. 

Over the host there sweeps a mighty wave 

Of warrior compassion for the hopeless brave. 

As in the air they see a javelin toss 

And pierce his breast, straight through the crimson 

cross. 
He slowly sinks ; they leave him lying there 
Beneath the banner that had been his care. 



THE IRISH EXILE 

How often I think of the days that are over, 
That bring even now the sweet scent of the clover, — 
When the strong heart of my heyday was beating high, 
And the loved visions of Fancy went drifting by. 

When the spirit rose up with the might of the gale. 
Upheld by a stern will that never could fail ; 
And I feared not the sun of Adversity's midday, 
Nor the lightning of Midnight that fiercely might play. 

I crossed, like the wind, the wild wastes of the wild moor. 
And breasted the combers that broke on our shore ; 
I oft heard the strange folk who people the hillside 
Ere they mounted the car of the starlight to ride. 

Though now a lone exile, sweet Erin, I love thee. 
And pray that thy children may in the future be free. 
Though he cannot help you who is sinking down fast. 
And the dreams of whose springtime are gilding the past. 



Souls of Fire 89 

THE ROLL OF HONOR 

" God Almighty hates a quitter." 1 

The Old Guard dies, but it never gives in, 2 
Though death be sounding all but Honor's tocsin 
To the dense black masses who cannot win, 
Who cannot fly, and who never give in ! 

A drum never rolls in the world to-day 
But it echoes the heartbeats of Marshal Ney. 3 
Though the cabal quenched with his blood his life, 
His sword still shines o'er the fields of strife ! 

The little "Revenge" against Spain's fifty-three, 
Still boom her guns o'er the Past's solemn sea. 
"Sink me the ship !" 4 cries the dying lion, 
When they find in the morn not a round for a gun. 

"I will eat off the skins from the yards above^ 
And the rigging that steadies this ship I love," 
Cried Magellan, 5 "but never will leave the track ; 
Never, whilst living, will I ever turn back !" 

The Stars and Stripes of this broad land 
Never float but they point to the spirit strand 
Where forever flies, o'er her sleeping band, 
The shot- torn flag of the Cumberland. 6 

Chard 7 and his braves still hold the ford, 
Despite the rush of the Zulu horde, 
Whose assegais stream with the gore 
Isandhlwana's slaughter bore. 

The rifles of Custer 8 ring sharp and clear; 
Answers the war whoop the Saxon cheer, 
As they place each shot with the utmost skill ; 
Not fighting to win; only fighting to kill! 

The Xanthians 9 prove but a sterile prey; 
Sheridan 10 changes the face of day ; 
Chickamauga's rocky shield. 11 
Nor "Stonewall" Jackson 12 knew how to yield! 



90 Souls of Fire 

Heart of Caecina 13 \vins safe through all, 
German, nor swamp, nor ghost appal. 
Arnold of Winkelried's 1 * brave breast 
Opens a pathway for the rest! 

The jesting of Datus 15 defying Nero; 
The whispered message of dying Zeno; 16 
Blow of Chaerea; 17 intention of Tell, 18 
Stroke for the ages tyranny's knell. 

Many to-day march with the Cross 
Who would not did the sign mean loss. 
The world is full of the Want to Win, 
But Honor loves those who will never give in ! 

i Fessenden. 

2 "The Old Guard dies, but it never surrenders !" The reply 
made by a French officer to the demand of the English at Waterloo 
when everything was lost and the Allied batteries were sweeping 
away with every round the dense black masses of the Old Guard 
who could still be seen retaining their formation long after the bat- 
tle was irretrievably lost and the shades of night had fallen. 

Pursued and mercilessly cut down by the cavalry of practically 
every European nation, Napoleon's picked corps constantly kept 
closing up their ranks to cover the retreat of their idolized Em- 
peror. No matter whether a bullet or a bayonet punctuated that 
remark, it cast a lustre upon the arms of France that the disaster 
of that day cannot diminish — plucking glory from defeat. 

3 Marshal Ney, the brightest star in the galaxy of Napoleonic 
heroes. He led the last charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo, hav- 
ing five horses shot under him whilst so doing. He was shot, after 
the battle, because of the hatred borne him by the despicable Bour- 
bon king. 

4 "Sink me the ship, Master Gunner!" Sir Richard Grenville, 
whilst lying mortally wounded on the shattered deck of his little 
vessel, the "Revenge," after fighting until the sun went down, and 
then all through the watches of the long-drawn night, sighting by 
the flash of the enemy's guns, or repelling their desperate attempts 
to board, and then continuing well into the next day — one small 
vessel against fifty-three of the greatest galleons of Spain. He 
could have escaped, as the other captains (lid, hut stayed until he 
took on board his sick and wounded so that they should not fall 
into the tender hands of the Inquisition. "For I never turned my 
back upon Don or devil yet !" 

5 Magellan, when starvation faced him in the Straits that now 
bear his name, attempting to circumnavigate the globe. The task 
was first accomplished by his expedition, though he lost his life. 



Souls of Fire 9 1 



6 The U. S. S. "Cumberland" was a wooden sloop of war en- 
gaged with and sunk by the Confederate ironclad, "Merrimac," after 
a fierce but hopeless fight on the part of the sloop, whose gunnery 
was of no effect upon the armor of her adversary. As the "Cum- 
berland" sank in rather shallow water, her mastheads appeared 
above the surface still proudly flying the Stars and Stripes — though 
beaten, unsubdued ! March 8, 1862, Hampton Roads. 

7 When the column composing the British army entered Zulu- 
land, in the war of 1879, Chard, with a small detachment, was 
left at the ford of Rorke's Drift, on the Buffalo River, with the sick 
and wounded. The main body of British troops were almost immedi- 
ately cut off and annihilated at Isandhlwana by the overwhelming 
forces of the Zulus, who then swept down in their victorious might 
upon the settlers, whom they would have exterminated but for the 
obstinate defence of Rorke's Drift; which, from the disparity of 
the opposing forces, sanguinary character of the conflict, and the 
desperate determination on both sides, has scarcely been paralleled 
in history. Nearly 4,000 of the flower of the Zulus composed the 
attacking impi; 139 defended the ford. Six times the Zulus rushed 
over the hastily improvised barricades around the hospital (which 
was in flames), only to meet death on the British bayonets. The 
Zulu loss was 351 killed, and over 1,000 wounded. 

8 The "Custer Massacre" occurred near the Little Big Horn 
River, June 25, 1876, when the cavalry under General Custer at- 
tacked the Sioux Indians, who were prepared and outnumbered his 
command more than twelve to one. As usual in savage warfare, 
quarter was neither asked nor expected. The entire command fell, 
righting to the last. "None wounded, none missing, all dead !" 

gXanthia, a city beleaguered by the Romans, and reduced to 
the last extremity by famine. Sooner than fall into the hands of 
the victors, the fighting force put to the sword all the women and 
children, burned all the treasures, and then committed suicide. The 
Romans, appalled by the terrible scene, cautiously entered, only to 
find a "City of the Dead." 

10 General Sheridan, being away from his army, was alarmed 
by the firing in the early morning. Riding to the front, he found 
all in headlong rout, the 6th corps alone standing firm. His fiery 
enthusiasm rallied the stragglers, whom he then hurled on the scat- 
tered and victorious enemy, and changed the disaster of morning 
to the glorious victory of night. Cedar Creek, October 19, 1864. 

11 The "Rock of Chickamauga," General George Henry 
Thomas, had charge of the left wing of the Union Army at Chicka- 
mauga. By his heroism and generalship he saved the Union Army 
from annihilation by the Confederates under Bragg, whose desper- 
ate charges broke upon his firm battalions as do the waves upon a 
rock. September 19-20, 1863. 

12 ("Stonewall") Thomas Jonathan Jackson, Confederate gen- 
eral. He and his brigade gained the sobriquet of "Stonewall" from 
their immovable fortitude at the battle of Bull Run — Manassas, 
July 21, 1861. 



92 Souls of Fire 



13 Caecina, legate under Germanicus. After the battle with 
Arminius he was ordered to retreat upon the Rhine. His 
march led through an extensive morass. Cut off by the Germans 
at the "Long Bridges," the worst possible place, only the oncom- 
ing night and the greed of the Germans for plunder saved his army 
from extermination. During that night of peril he was warned in 
a dream by the blood-bespattered ghost of Quintilius Varus, which, 
rising from the swamp, beckoned and called to him. Undaunted, 
he accepted battle the following morning, and inflicted a crushing 
defeat, with terrible slaughter, to the enemy. In disregarding the 
omen, he had better luck than his kindred spirit, Claudius Pulcher, 
who, when preparing for battle with the Carthaginian fleet, being 
warned by the augurs that the omens were not propitious, the 
sacred chickens refusing to eat, tossed them overboard with the 
remark that if they would not eat they should at least drink! 

14 The heavily armed Austrian knights with their long lances 
in bristling array proved impenetrable to the heroic Swiss in their 
fight for freedom at Sembach (July 9, 1386), until Arnold of Win- 
kelried, crying, "I will open a way for freedom I" clasped in his 
arms as many of the Austrian lances as possible, burying them deep 
in his breast, made an opening through which his desperate com- 
rades poured. Three times the flag of Austria fell from dying 
hands ere the Duke Leopold was slain and victory decided for the 
Swiss. 

15 Datus, comic actor. At the height of Nero's tyranny he 
dared, when he came to the line "Farewell, father; farewell, 
mother," to mimic the gestures of people drinking and swimming — 
significant of the deaths of Claudius and Agrippina ; and on utter- 
ing the last clause, "You stand this moment on the brink of Orcus," 
he plainly intimated his application of it to the precarious position 
of the senate. 

16 Zeno, the philosopher, being pounded to death with clubs, 
said he had something for the ear of the tyrant. The tyrant bent 
over to catch the whisper, and Zeno, catching his ear between his 
teeth, tore it from his head. 

17 Chserea, centurion of the Praetorian Guard, repeatedly in- 
sulted in an obscene manner by the Emperor Caligula whenever he 
came for the password, undertook to deal the first blow when the 
tyrant was slain ; thereby gaining the gratitude of humanity. Con- 
demned to die, the only favor he asked, and obtained, was to be dis- 
patched with the same sword with which he had performed his 
heroic mission. A. D. 41. 

18 Tell, the legendary hero of Switzerland, refused obeisance 
to the cap set on a pole by the tyrant Gessler. He was ordered to 
shoot an apple from the head of his own son. He took two arrows, 
but hit the apple with the first. Asked by Gessler what the second 
arrow was for, he replied : "Your heart, if the first one missed." 



Souls of Fire 93 

THE BACHELOR'S SOLILOQUY 

" The lover, summoned by a sign from her, now declares, ' Here I am ! ' " — Balzac. 

Here, in the solitude of this still nook, 
To smoke and dream, and down through Memory look 
To other days and men, and women sweet and fair: 
Thick clustering fancies crowd this silent lair. 

Save when the murmurs of the darkening street 
Break through the musings and the senses greet. 
To wake ; to lapse ; again to trace the thread 
Down through the labyrinth of Memory's dead. 

Not, not that song! That with its wild unrest 
Shrill wails disconsolation : Love fore'er unblest. 
So sweet, so sad, so real : What might have been 
Shifts like the illusions of a fairy scene! 

(Some longing lover— on a futile quest — 
Whistles the loneliness of his warm breast, 
And waits — in vain. Her adamantine heart — 
Impervious — guards her from unmonied art!) 



OSSIAN LEAVING IRELAND 

Thy memory brings regret and sweet, sad tunes, 
Quaint and forgotten as the Druid runes ; 
Indefinite desire, and the bitterness of wrong, 
The sense of hopeless striving and that coming years are 
long. 

I seem to see thee through the bygone years, 
Yet scarce discern thee for my blinding tears ; 
I watch the wake blend with the driving mist 
And dream our souls have 'mid those shadows kist. 

And so I watch the white receding wake 
Shot with bright pearls that, rising, ever break 
And are no more, like my lost hopes of love, — 
Save that thou waitest at the gates above. 



94 Souls of Fire 

A CREED 

To ask not for the world's award, 
Nor for undying bays; 

Let each deed prove its own reward; 
To have contented days. 

To grieve not that a victor's crown 
You never may possess ; 

Too often merit is weighed down ; 

Chance measures our success. 

In fields of war, in lists of love, 

Strives man or strives brute beast, 

The issue rests with powers above, — 
The victor strives the least. 

Still to tilt on then forever, 

Though with unsuccessful lance ; 
Though the aim of all endeavor 

Still is cheated by a chance. 

And not to think our Father great 

Would curse the babe unborn; 

Or that the curse of changeless fate 
Has made one life forlorn. 

Nor will you let your heart be wrung 
By Memory's tale of wrongs ; 

Let them remain, unheard, unsung, 
With half-forgotten songs. 

To strive to use your gifts aright, 

All humble though they be: 

To work according to the light 

That God may grant to thee. 



Souls of Fire 95 

THE LOST CHORDS 

"A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy — the smile that 
accepts a lover before words are uttered, and the smile that lights 
on her first born baby." — Haliburtoti. 

Oh ! sweet and happy daydreams ! Oh ! childlike confi- 
dence ! 
Ere simple trust is shattered in the shallows of credence : 
Such things oft go at auction : you are but one of few — 
The eyes that beam so bright for you, beam bright for 
others, too ! 

A solitary eagle may wing its way on high ; 

A mountain standing lonely break the blue ground of 

the sky; 
Friendships congeal to icicles; love to frostbitten stone; 
But the woman who has "loved and lost" will never stay 

alone ! 

As at the feet of Ceres, when for her child forlorn 

She searched o'er hill and fallow through the fields of 

yellow corn, 
Sprang flowers in her footprints where'er the goddess 

trod, 
So will some silent token prove the passing of a god ! 

So in the steps of beauty lovers must ever lie 

Mute tributes to her triumph and the power of her eye — 

But the stiffest, primest straightlace that ever broke a 

heart 
Must smile to think how nicely it was helped on by her 

art! 

Did ever yet an iceblock not glisten in the sun? 
What fool to catch a meteor would for an instant run? 
And never yet since Adam paid so dearly for his fruit 
Has a lover long persisted in an unencouraged suit. 

She will say with indignation: "Oh Dear! Oh Gracious! 

My!" 
Then calm your agitation with a faint gleam in her eye. 



96 Souls of Fire 

She will cut you, sting you, mock you, to surprise of 
passers by — 

Who, somehow, never see the pin that holds the butter- 
fly! 

Never sweet and gentle lady would disdain the humblest 

thing — 
Unless she had a better well fastened on her string! 
If you dug out every corner, and burned the whole 

"woodpile," 
The lady and the "nigger" would be laughing all the 

while ! 

"Man has his will," Oliver said, "but woman has her 

way !" 
'Tis just the same: Man only tries, but woman has her 

Say: 1 
Turn back the Clock of Ages; roll back the rising tide, 
You might — but "squelch" a woman — not if a million 

devils tried ! 

You may climb the greasy prize pole. You may pin a 

squirming eel ; 
You may, perhaps, with patience, find what a miser 

would conceal. 
You might catch a weasel napping — but a woman's 

inborn tact 
Would turn the tables on you though you caught her in 

the act ! 

i 
She will give you things with one hand, and with the 

other take them back, 
Until your wits pop in and out like a boy's jumping jack. 
She will unlock the sacred precincts — and push you in, 

beside ! 
Then shriek "Police," and swear that you to "break and 

enter" tried ! 

When she is at the altar, and you are one at last. 

(She is that One — but that was relinquished in the past). 



Souls of Fire 97 

She is thinking (whilst you wonder what on earth she 

saw in you!), 
"Not just the thing I wanted — but the best that I 

could do!" 

You might run, like Machiavelli, the mind's gamut and 

scale ; 
You could turn the whole thing inside out— yes! upend 

it like a pail ! 
But when satisfied with playing (men are intellectual 

lords!), 
There would be at least a bushel— or perhaps two — 

Lost Chords! 

" There are three species of creatures who when they seem coming are going ; 
when they seem going they come : diplomats, women and crabs ! 

1 Montaigne tells a story of a scold being "ducked." Persisting to call 
her husband a "lousy knave," which, as the tale shows, he was, they held 
her well down under the water ( the husband was probably at the business 
end of the arrangement), hoping to silence her — but no, above the surface 
appeared her hands, making the motions of cracking lice. 



LOVE 

Love lights his torch, or never, 
Ere courtships are begun ; 

It is so and was ever, 

Hearts never yet were won. 



THE GIFT 

This little token of a high esteem 

Accept, nor Pride's reward for favors deem. 

Harder for you to take than me to give, 

Who only claim the friend's prerogative : 

An image added to the household gods, 

That brings him back when Fancy softly nods, 

And o'er the Past's silent and sombre sea 

Shall view the sails of distant memory. 



98 Souls of Fire 

NOT THE SINGER, BUT SONG 

Not the singer, but song; 

Not the words, but the thought expressed 

In the music's magic read by the heart oppressed. 

Not act, but intention ; 
Not result, but the aim and scope, 

And the meaning wisdom that feathered the Arrow of 
Hope. 

Not the crown, but the king; 
Not the State, but the majesty- 
Added to office by the holder's dignity. 

Not the spelling, but speech ; 

Not the metre or jingle of rhyme, 

But the might of the message re-echoing for all time. 

Not the hand, but the art ; 

Not the brain, but the soul supreme 

Voicing the whisper from the Empery of Dream. 

Not the giver, but gift; 

Not the sum, but the soul you see 

In the benevolence upwelling in the act of charity. 

Not success, but attempt; 
Not the failure so plainly seen, 

But the magic and glamour of things that might have 
been. 



BOHEMIA 

Bohemia, with its wildness, 

We saw through the shadows pass, 
With its setting of tawdry tinsel 

And its clinking of glass to glass. 
The bitter remembrance and heartache 

The laughter of women brings ; 
And the tinkle and throb of its music 

With its suggestion of better things. 



Souls of Fire 99 



WOMAN 

" The calculation of probabilities is never more idle than when applied 
to the thoughts and sentiments of a woman." — Octave Feuillet. 

Like the showery smiles of April 
Are the moods of a woman's mind, — 

You cannot tell with the daybreak 
What the sunset skies will find. 

A delicate sense of refinement 

Goes where a woman goes, 
Faint as the bloom of the violet, 

Tender as heart of rose. 

Never a gentle or gracious action 

But lays her influence bare. 
Wherever the impress of courtesy, 

Heart of sweet woman there ! 

The depth of suggestion in music, 

Or poesy's floodtide strong, 
But echoes some woman's memory, 

Sweet as an old love song. 

Never gleams faint flash of jewel, 

Never a flower's perfume, 
Though unseen, a woman's presence 

Is shrined in the present's gloom. 

Never a quaint air of music 

Seems to float out from fairyland, 

But it seems naught could have caught it 
But the grace of a woman's hand ! 

"A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, 
may marry whom she pleases." — Thackeray. 



100 Souls of Fire 

THE HAVEN OF OUR HOPES 

Lord, let us see the Haven of our Hopes, 

Though sails be rags and stranded are the ropes ; 

And though no pilot comes as sinks the sun, 

And we stand off and on where white the surges run. 

As shrieks the winter gale that rises with the night, 

The Haven of our Dreams but let us sight : 

That Anchorage of Hope that we may never reach, 

Nor safely, surely tread its shelving, solid beach. 

Still let us see the glory of sunset, 

When twilight creeps and eyes of Hope are wet with 

tears restrained. 
Still tinge the clouds of toil day with a promise fair to 

see, 
Though darkness dim fulfillments not to be. 

Yes ! still to see the Promise of our Dreams, 

As when through oriel the sunlight streams, 

And tints of dying day transmitted pass 

The hovering angels in transfigured glass. 

Still let our dreams hued thus forever be, 

Sublime, though unattained: beyond reality. 

And when the sun that lights them thus shall set, 

All undismayed, without one vain regret, 

Forth may we go, with Hope still at the helm, 

Across the twilight sea to claim that promised realm. 



FRIENDSHIP 

Few friends are here ; the best are over there, 

Faintly suggested in some lonely air, 

Caught by some heart responsive to the hand 

Of deep, true feeling and the soul's demand. 

One heart to answer to the chords of life 

Ere they are silenced in the toil of strife ; 

Some one for whom trust will unbroken stand — 

At least one other that might understand! 



THE POETIC PRINCIPLE, OR IDEALISTIC 
TENDENCY 

AN ANALYSIS OF POETRY 

THE idea is analagous to that of the Zoroastrian system as 
derived from the Zend-Avesta. Taking Ormuzd — the 
principle of good — for the poetic principle, and Ahriman 
— the evil principle — for the contrary. Not that the one is 
necessarily good and the other evil. Quite the contrary some- 
times. Regard for appearance is often as strong as virtue; 
passes for, and is accepted as such generally. 

What is poetry? It is generally understood to be words 
set to metre and rhyme, etc. Yes, to a certain extent. But 
that does not tell us much. A mystery enshrouds the matter 
which even the great masters have left untouched. One cannot 
read Poe's account of the process that evolved "The Raven" 
without coming to the conclusion that he wished to place that 
as the cornerstone of that eerie mathematical edifice he sought 
to rear. That, as with his psychological studies, he took the 
answer and, working backward, gave the world an impossible 
problem. 

Of one thing we may be sure, and that is, that poetry is 
the expression of an over-shadowing influence. The highest 
flight of poetry is ever connected with the expression of lofty 
sentiment. That it is not the absolute product of the intellectual 
faculties is evidenced by the ease and grace of composition at 
one time more than another. 

A person may never read, much less write, poetry, yet live 
it unconsciously. The wanderer and adventurer feel poetry 
that others only write of. True poetry is all that is noble, 
elevating, and generously honorable in life: exaggerating, per- 
haps, but expressing, whether in deeds or words. 

There are certain conditions productive of that indescribable 
sensation of the inner consciousness which, expressed, becomes 
a poem. Who, being moved to tears whilst listening to music; 
entranced by the splendors of a glorious sunset; or awed by the 
solemnity of twilight, can doubt that those sensations are akin? 
The same applies to the nobler feelings. 

The poetic principle may find expression in art, literature, 
statuary, scientific pursuits, or in a noble, generous or valiant 
action. A generous impulse, or the impulse that leads to a 
daring deed, is essentially the movement of that principle. That 
peculiar sensation, as if a cold breath were passing over portions 
of the body, particularly the scalp, — to have the flesh creep — 
when listening to music, poetry, or the recital of a nobly gen- 
erous or valiant action, is the passing of the poetic principle 
of inspiration, and was assuredly felt by the composer. Love, 
music, and religion, in their purest manifestations, so blend as 
to seem the same. The earnest religious conviction is the 
genuine impulse of the poetic principle ; akin to the inspiration 
of love or music. Much more poetry is lived than written. 
101 



102 Souls of hire 



Poetry should be examined along these lines: 

Temperament. Neglecting entirely those "who are fit 
neither for heaven nor hell" (Dante). First, the poetic, or, what 
is the same thing, the idealistic. The people, as Emerson so 
accurately defines them, whose eyes seem to be so set in their 
heads as to render them incapable of looking sidewise, i.e., 
straightforward. Sincere, independent, unsophisticated; ideal- 
izing the work in hand. Love or hate without analyzing the 
process or computing the cost. Believe the office should seek 
the man, etc. Forever acting nobler than present impulse would 
suggest. Unostentatious in charity. Of slow and archaic turn 
of thought; believing that honor is to honesty what steel is to 
iron. Little business instinct generally. Plaintiffs in divorce. 
Taking little part in public life. Believe in work for the work's 
sake. Impractical, ofttimes, in the worldly things that concern 
them most. Sensitive and shrinking in no ordinary degree, a 
chalk line is sufficient to keep them away; yet, in the midst of 
actual danger, bold to recklessness. Never use, and often fail 
to grasp, the equivocal language so much affected by the clever, 
quick-thinking people who are forever covering an imaginary 
retreat. The second class to be considered: Those who make 
the covenants of the eyes (Job), — the oral agreement; the 
unbonded pact — and repudiate them without scruple whenever 
the opportunity to make capital by so doing occurs. (We lie 
by giving the inference as well as by the tongue or pen.) Those 
who, among the middle and lower classes, look upon the church 
as the vantage ground from which profit and preferment may 
be derived. Who look more to finance than affinity when 
bestowing their maturely deliberated affections. Mighty and 
foremost in all societies they frequent. If not virtuous, prudent. 
Getting things honorably if possible, but getting them. Say 
"Please," but never "Thank you." Their gratitude being "a 
lively appreciation of favors to come." Pushing, calculating 
players, closely computing the advantages of every move on 
the checker-board of life. For whom no generous impulse ever 
breaks the placidity of appearance. Superficial, sophisticated; 
getting everything they can out of every one they can for the 
least they can. 

Of course, amid the vast diversity of disposition, the lines 
cannot be drawn as sharply as they are here defined; I have 
simply denoted the dominant characteristics. 

Then its manifestation in the poetry and pride of indepen- 
dence and the point of honor. Why, from time immemorial, has 
the idealist been at variance to the powers that be? History 
holds the answer. All institutions tend to solidify. The nation 
that, tinder tin* influence of the poetry of independence, breaks 
the yoke of tyranny to-day, will to-morrow endeavor to shackle 
others, or just as soon as those Institutions have solidified. 

Religion often changes its name and aspect; the character 
and bigotry remaining the same. The martyr of to-day becomes 
the torturer of to-morrow. The stiff, uncharitable church mem- 

1 Walpole, Voltaire, Rochefoucauld. ( ? ) 



Souls of Fire 103 



ber of to-day is simply the metamorphosis of the Pharisee — 
the "whited sepulchre" of olden time. 

The poet and prophet are almost always poor — Buddha 
seems to be the exception — among those untrammelled by con- 
ventionality; beyond the pale of solidification. So the spirit o£ 
the idealist, blind to what others see and think so grand in 
life, impinges 'itself against the strata of solidification; to be 
shattered in all probability; yet, in the course of time, to rend 
that structure asunder. Christ stands pre-eminent as the type 
of the true poet or idealist. The wondrous beauty of expression; 
detestation of conventionality; love for the poor and sympathy 
for the suffering, are all the true manifestations of the poetic 
principle. 

There is a very general tendency to regard independence 
as being all very well in the Constitution, but that it will not do 
in the life of the every-d~y. The Doctrine of Dependence is 
preached with all the power and persuasiveness of tongue or 
pen. The Molech of Modern Days — Success — is to be sacrificed 
to and worshipped on the Altars of Influence; the recipients of 
which are often as truly paupers as those of the almshouse. 

To keep out of trouble three things are essential: Never 
to meddle with a woman's dress, a man's politics, or anyone's 
religion. By those things many earn their daily bread, and 
interference will, necessarily, cause bad feeling: it will also be 
useless, because fashion is arbitrary, opinion infallible, and from 
prejudice there is no appeal. We believe what we are taught; 
and you would be as earnest a Hottentot as you are a Christian 
had circumstances so decreed. One must follow the crowd and 
never leave the beaten track. No matter which happens to be, 
be on the winning side. 

"Be not the first by whom the new are tried, 
Nor yet the last to leave the old aside." 

— Pope. 

Clique rules everywhere, but the idealist, like the bull in the 
china shop, seeing nothing but what is before him, smashes 
away at everything in his determined effort to butt down the 
wall that obstructs him — with Quixotic fury tilting with wind- 
mills or ramming his head against stone walls. Only from 
organized effort can any appreciable result be obtained; and 
the sort of people we find running things are usually very 
matter-of-fact, practical people, whether the organization have 
a spiritual aim or otherwise. (Anstey's people of "presence," 
i.e., paunch — mental as well as physical. Hawthorne had the 
deepest insight into this character.) 

While there is nothing quite so despicable as the wail for 
charitable preference, or absurd as the vaunting pretension that 
is oblivious to its own obvious inflation, there is poetry in noble, 
valiant, meritorious ambition, awaiting the award with equa- 
nimity; and true merit distinguishes the men who rise, as a rule. 
"No wailer before ill luck. One mindful in all he did 
To think how his work of to-day would live in to-morrow's 

tale." 



104 Souls of Fire 



Nevertheless, it is the clap-trap, meretricious qualities that 
attract attention — the central figure, the hero of the hour; the 
ambitious, salary-seeking preacher will be heard before the 
prophet of God. The immortal sermons of the inspired are 
tabooed — Daudet, Tolstoi, Balzac, for instance. Do those ser- 
mons benefit those who read them? Do the others those who 
hear them? Even the Master acknowledged there was no hope 
for the seed that fell upon stony ground. Those truths driven 
home, caught by the flash of intuitive genius — the predestined ; 
that excrutiatingly convulsing theory of Balzac's; that wonder- 
ful pen picture by Froude of the effeminately ethereal little 
dominie pursued by the coterie of ardent and fair devotees, 
burning with deep, inner conviction, is true to life. The differ- 
ence between genius and mediocrity seems to be, chiefly, that 
one accepts the instance as an isolated one, but the other 
grasps from it the eternal truth of all time. In this particular 
case, it seems to be, that either talent or celibacy must conduct 
a mission to be successful. Women are essentially poets in 
their views of life, except, of course, the purely business propo- 
sition of marriage, and seldom wax enthusiastic over married 
conductors of anything. The poetic tendency loves striking 
contrasts, and, just as the steeple, pointing to the azure dome 
of heaven, is pre-eminent among buildings, so the poet of the 
pulpit, drawing from an inexhaustible store of beautiful imagery, 
from which he has but to select, stands there like an exclam- 
ation point towering high above the commonplace letters of 
life's dull page. To cause a perfect furore of devotional 
activity you must ground your conductors of the lightning 
deep in personal magnetism, shining ability, eloquence, or beau- 
tiful ceremony. The combination is irresistible. To many, 
these will appear carnal considerations. Considerations of 
success in any undertaking are apt to take on that tinge. The 
shading of these considerations is imperceptible. It is an indis- 
pensable condition of any new sect that amounts to anything 
that the marriage restrictions be tampered with. Asceticism 
or the reverse. Thus enabling those who are in to get out, or 
get relief of some kind ; and those who have not been able 
hitherto to do so, to get in. This offering a very palpable 
alleviation of their woes to so many, accounts for the success 
of those movements that have offered liberal inducements. The 
church is the nucleus around which centers much of society, 
at least in and among the American middle and lower classes. 
Many earnest people must feel that there are many busy-bodies 
finding there a means for mental dissipation who would other- 
wise go farther and fare worse. 

Solid ability may rise: though the recognition thereof by 
superiors, without the aid of spectacles of some kind, approaches 
the heroic virtues. As to dependence, we hear it eulogized 
everywhere in such terms as: He started with nothing, and 

worked up to . Yes! if it happened the way it appears. I'.ut 

sometimes we happen to know just how he did it. How, like 
the devotees at some famous shrines, he went up on his knees, 



Souls of Fire 105 



and, to make assurance doubly sure, this particular person licked 
up all the dust he encountered that was at all likely to obstruct 
his progress. We understand. Say nothing, but smile that old, 
weary, reminiscent smile. There was no poetry about that! 
Nor is there any where independence is sacrificed, no matter 
what the gain! 

How do some people succeed despite lack of everything 
but impudence? Because chicanery, cant, humbug and double 
dealing are beneath the notice of all true men and women, and 
so shaded off in their effects as to be almost invisible. 

"He wormed his way through college!" Yes! but how 
often eating the bread of charity and the pottage of pauperism 
that he had neither the manhood to earn nor the independence 
to refuse. And so on to infinity. Whimper, simper, cant, hum- 
bug, held aloft as the ideal of the youth who aspires. Manners, 
not courtesy. Custom and clothing, not Christianity. There 
are greater things in life than crawling up in the world! 

There is the ideality and poetry of the every-day that raises 
living to higher and nobler planes of thought and action. And 
to those who can be swayed and ennobled by the nobility of high 
ideals, what greater influence can hover over the storm clouds of a 
tempestuous life than that indefinable charm of gentle woman- 
hood, with its deeper, yet sweeter, suggestion of higher and better 
things? Of course one cannot help knowing what is so often consid- 
ered the young man's ideal, and the very apparent mistakes that are 
made. But, even so (what I am endeavoring to delineate is 
the influence, not the ideal itself), take a case in question. His 
friends smile when, in some unguarded moment, he reveals his 
divinity. The absurdity, to them, is fully evident. She 1 may 
be only a flattering tribute to her dressmaker's skill, and con- 
spicuous solely for the display of her milliner's creations and 
the assumption of virtues impossible to anything but the adver- 
tisement of a patent medicine; with as much heart as a tin can, 
and as much soul as a Waterbury watch, and whose conversa- 
tional powers are those of a reminiscent Penelope glorying in 
the insistence of numerous suitors ; but not all the restraints of 
law, denunciations of the pulpit, and precepts of philosophy, 
combined, equal the elevating influence of imaginative love. 
Observation or association may dispel the illusion, but the 
impress for purity remains forever. 

There is the poetry of that most beautiful ideal of all — 
Home. A place other than irksome. The Temple of the Heart. 
Something more than a necessary evil — the painful solution of 
life's principal problem. That penurious raft of petty econ- 
omies, ever awash with fresh discomforts, adrift in the drizzle of 
unending rainy day. It is implanted in the breast of every 
true man and, to a far greater extent, in the bosom of every 
true woman. For the woman, shrined in the Temple of her 
Home, listening to the prayers of her own little ones, is as far 
above the irritable product of social distraction, or center of 

1 Milton's " Ship of Tarsus," Samson Agonistes. 



106 Souls of Fire 



general fussiness, as an unfading star, beaming for centuries yet 
unborn, is above the spluttering candle that, in its poor and 
ineffectual way, serves but to illuminate the squalor of some 
wretched hovel. One shines for time; the other for eternity. 
Many who never realize this ideal, or rather, seek to, are those 
who idealize most, but prefer the ideality in anticipation or 
retrospection to the possibilities of proximity: and proximity 
is the sole excuse of many for marriage. The paradise of perspec- 
tive is only too often a purgatory in proximity, but the breast that 
has never responded to such an impulse has no poetry; the breath 
of God has never rippled across that frozen surface. Ambition 
or selfishness may be the bar, but poetry brings its retribution 
when the leaves of memory are rustling in the loneliness of life. 
There is the distinctive poetry of gentle womanhood. Old- 
fashioned, perhaps; but one cannot help noticing, by contrast, 
the manifestations of the New Woman idea, with its frigid 
insistence upon those customs which every true lady deferen- 
tially accepts as courtesies; its blatant self-assertiveness; its 
aggressive tone of voice, and the absurd imitation of masculin- 
ity in its mannerisms of dress, without thinking that the 
severely practical style is a loss to those of the community who 
appreciate the poetry that is not written; and wondering what 
combination of impossible circumstances could call the poetry 
of a blush to the macadamized surface of that cheek: for there 
is a sort of poetry in a blush, just as there is in a punch in a 
good cause, for both are the unsophisticated demonstration of 
an ingenuous disposition. 

The poetry of chivalrous manhood — no matter what the 
cost; exemplified by that ideal of an idealist, Cyrano de 
Bergerac: 

"It is my character that I adorn. 

I do not deck me like a popinjay; 

But though less foppish, I am better dressed: 

I would not sally forth, through carelessness, 

With an insult ill wiped out, 

Or with my conscience sallow with sleep 

Still lingering in its eyes, 

Honor in rags, or scruples dressed in mourning. 

But I go out with ;ill upon me shining, 

With liberty and freedom for my plume; 

Not a mere upright figure; 

Tis my soul that I thus hold erect as if witl^ stays, 

And decked with daring deeds instead of ribbons, 

Twirling my wit as it were my moustache, 

The while I pass among the crowd, 

I make bold truths ring out like spurs." 

— Rostand. 

That is the sublime epitome of the art of getting yourself 
disliked! Requiring an inherent faculty, perhaps, but, never- 
theless, an art, just as winning a woman's affirmative is. 1 

1 The rainbow hues of promises, unlimited, if unfulfilled. There is an illimitable field 
for a vivid poetic imagination in this direction. 



Souls of Fire 107 



Montaigne's inimitable story of the young lady who, on one 
occasion, leaped from a window, at jeopardy of life and limb, 
yet, on others, was quite amenable to reason, illustrates that. 
But the first requires none; the last, most assiduous practice. 
But this is no place to discuss sacred or occult matters; those, 
and kindred sciences, such, for instance, as the black magic of 
getting your offers refused 1 and, with a resignation that is 
preternaturally suspicious, letting it stay that way (Surely, 
this is what Montaigne refers to in that beautiful simile of the 
"hook that will not hold in the soft cheese."), and the edifying 
art of heading them off. But perhaps this last may not be 
quite explicit. It means that when (supposedly) well-bred 
people are applying the pumping process for the extraction of 
information — the object of which is as obvious to any but a 
fool as to themselves (Bacon, in that wonderful simile of the 
motions behind the curtain, speaks of this), the careful locking 
away of the desired points in the pigeon-holes of the mind and, 
with affecting candor, the substitution of something so like what 
is desired as to be indistinguishable even to yourself, approach 
the domain of necromancy, a working knowledge of which could 
only be acquired by the aid of telepathy, and, in fact, dem- 
onstrate conclusively the undeveloped resources that, no doubt, 
will be at the disposal of the student in the near future. Buried 
amid the deep foundations of the mind, and used unconsciously 
by the simple who have no desire to offend, they are all parts 
of a liberal education, but concern those who have conscientious 
scruples against being impaled on the horns of a dilemma, 
either of which is worse than the other (Gaelic), to the inex- 
pressible delight of every one but their sublimely unconscious 
selves; being syphoned, to their chagrin and disgust, but to the 
rapturous exultation of their interlocutors; or to the extrava- 
gant demands made upon the time, talents, conscience or purse 

1 Offers refused. The idea may thus be stated : Circumstances may practically compel 
a person to be as sincere in offering for acceptance as he or she would be grateful for a 
refusal. It is based on the fundamental principle that much insincerity prevails. People 
will refuse what they really want, even after manifesting that desire, in order to make the 
acceptance appear a charitable condescension by no means nattering to the offering victim. 
It is equivalent to blowing the enemy up with his own powder. If the refusal can be 
extorted accompanied by a sarcastic remark or two it is much more effective; something 
like this: " Yes, at the Greek calends ! " or, "When the robins wear overalls ! " etc. But 
tastes differ, and this is perhaps a needless refinement. 

The best and most authentic instance we have of this manoeuvre being successfully 
executed is where Ulysses, after giving rigid instructions not to be released until past the 
haunt of the Syrens, stops the ears of his men with wax, and then has himself lashed to the 
mast. " If freedom I demand, be every fetter strain 'd, be added band to band." Then, as 
soon as he hears the song of the Syrens, bawls to be released — in vain. (Odyssey, Book 12.) 
"Let prudence be the guide and guard thy various passage through the tide." With the 
advancement in education, etc., such drastic measures are not resorted to. The variations on 
these themes are endless, and a judicious combination will enable anyone to avoid or extri- 
cate themselves from almost any sort of a predicament that" flesh is heir to." The theory of 
wrestling is that one must be under though both insist on being on top. 
" That thou mayest injure no man, dovelike be, 
And serpentlike that none may injure thee." 

— Cowper. 

2 "Ah ! with what caution men should aye proceed with those who look not merely to 
men's works, but, with their intellectual vision, read each hidden thought which in the 
bosom lurks ! " {Dante, "Inferno.") 

And, " He is not lost who loses not himself I " 



108 Souls of Fire 

of likeable persons. Good nature, according to Marion Crawford, 
is a combination of the vulgarity that tries to please everybody, and 
the weakness that cannot say, "No." But, as Machiavelli says : 
"There are three sorts of intellect : One understands by its own 
quickness of perception ; another when explained by some one else ; 
but the third understands neither by itself nor by the explanation 
of others." To the first those hints will be superfluous ; to the 
second insufficient; and to the last indifferent. Each has a vote 
though; but the last the loudest voices, which, ofttimes, is a 
determining factor. 

"A prudent chieftain not always must display 
His powers in equal ranks and fair array. 
But with the occasion and the place comply; 
Conceal his force, nay! seem sometimes to fly. 
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem; 
Nor is it Homer nods, but we who dream." 

All music is not poetry, or poetry music — perhaps I had 
better use the word verse. A very superficial examination of 
the hymnal will convince even the most skeptical of this fact. 
The power of association and recollection are their extenuating 
features, for few of the selections are fit for anything but the 
nursery. Phillips Brooks said it was a pity that the devil should 
have all the good music ! Pope refers to this sort of thing 
when speaking of the very respectable person who sat down 
every Sunday to write a poem! Balzac, too, comments on the 
unreasonableness of expected inspiration at stated times. 

So, too, when listening to the products of some of those 
composers whom a clever writer recently designated as the 
"fine representatives of the industrious German middle class," 
one cannot but be struck by the wonderful technique of the 
work; but it is the manual dexterity of the juggler, differing 
but in kind. The work lacks soul! And the reason that some 
songs, hymns and airs are forever popular, in the true sense of 
the word (the good old songs!), is that the soul of the poetic 
principle is pulsating through them forever. 

Lastly, why does the idealist so often fail? Why to him 
are so applicable those beautiful lines of Milton's: 

"From morn 
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 
A summer's day; and with the setting sun 
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star:" 

— "Paradise Lost." 

Plato, Ca?sar, Luther, Napoleon, Washington, and innu- 
merable others of less note, poets and philosophers — idealists, 
hare left their mark upon the world's progress: chiefly through 
their exceptional ability. But how often we see the idealist 
working and striving, denying and brooding, in a ceaseless 
endeavor i" hatch an addled egg. Because the idealist is forever 
dealing with shadows. Lost in the infinity of idealism, he sees 
the things that are invisible to others, just as Michael Angelo 



Souls of Fire 109 



could see the statue in the unchiselled block of marble; and the 
inability to make others see is in direct proportion to the vivid- 
ness of the imagination. "A prophet is not without honor, save 
in his own country, and in his own house." (Matthew xiii: 57.) 
"Wolf!" People smile. Wolf comes and eats up both. Too 
late then ! It may well be called an eerie outlook upon life. 
The more unsophisticated people are, the more will they be 
taken advantage of. Yet, losing, they know they are losing; 
for the simple have intuition, just as children have, to a remark- 
able degree. A child's divination of character is seldom at 
fault. We seldom deceive others. We may over-reach them 
by taking advantage of their desire not to offend. Machiavelli 
admits the difficulty. 

The administration of Civil Service Rules — that Utopian 
dream — the realization of which has done so much to raise the 
standards of intelligence and honor in political life and civic 
administration in this and other countries where applied; the 
abolition of slavery — the dream of immemorial ages ; Christian 
and kindred associations that are doing so much to burst the 
solidification of the liquor interests, and to take from politics 
the taint of corruption, and shake off the lethargy of police 
regulation and the eradication of immorality, wherever found; 
the steam engine, telephone, telegraph, anesthetics, the discovery 
of America; the passage to India; these, but a few of many, all, 
all were the dreams of imaginative idealists who could se ; what 
did not then exist save in their minds. 

But, just as those most hate the Jews (who really carry 
their characteristics to the perfection of a fine art) who are 
surpassed by them on their own lines, so the idealist is hated 
by men of ideas, and openly antagonized by the practically 
commonplace. A man's worth is usually in inverse ratio to 
the number of his friends: the widely distributed affection is 
dissipated; only in concentration is it worth while. Antagonism 
is the stone on which merit whets itself. It will do more for it 
than friendship can. The person without enemies is a non- 
entity. 

"Not on the neck of prince nor hound, 
Nor on a woman's finger twined, 
May gold from the deriding ground 
Keep sacred that we sacred bind: 
Only the heel 
Of splendid steel 
Shall stand secure on sliding fate, 
When golden navies weep their freight." 

— "The Splendid Spur." 

Still, the backstairs are unobstructed, and hinges, eased by 
the oil of influence, swing easily to the touch; but what an 
awful jam of unsophisticated, ingenuous, earnest, enthusiastic, 
meritorious originals struggle and fight to win their way up 
the front stairs! And how absurd! "Like leaves on trees the 



110 Souls of Fire 



race of men is found." (Iliad. Book 6.) In given lines, taking 
out of consideration the misfits, one differs little from another 
save in opportunity ; barring talent, which is extremely scarce. 
The negative qualities count most in getting on in the world. 
It is a sort of negative talent to keep out of trouble, and a 
positive genius for pushing yourself forward. Nevertheless, none 
but a self-sufficient fool refuses the assistance offered by power. 
You might as well try to pull yourself up by your bootstraps as 
to rise without taking advantage of opportunity and friendship ; 
but the question is : Is it a tribute to ability, or a donation to 
charity? Sycophancy has no poetry. 

As the man who believes that the laws of health are as 
immutable as those of planetary motion, and that, under or- 
dinary circumstances, observation, habit, diet and common 
sense will insure it, is confounded with the transcendentalist 
who believes that everything is amiss, by the people who have 
always depended upon doctors for their health, and always in- 
tend to, so the idealist is classed as an iconoclast who believes 
in nothing. 

Often thwarted by some turn of fate or chance utterly 
unforeseen, that ofttimes is more or less directly attributable 
to their own entire impracticability; grasping at the stars, ob- 
livious to the flowers blooming at their feet; throwing a halo 
about very ordinary affairs and a glamour wheie none exists, they 
see the end but overlook the means: hating to be tortured with 
details. Just as in poetic composition the last stanza generally 
comes first, with the intermediate pen-pictures floating in nebu- 
lous suggestion round some one ringing phrase; as in love or 
peril the assertive theories as to what ought to be pale into 
absolute insignificance in the face of the demoralizing realization of 
what is, so idea is one thing, and practical performance entirely 
another. 

The people who sing loudest or pray longest in church; 
lead the dance; manage the club, the lodge, or the social gath- 
ering or enterprise; or secure the co-operation of their fellow 
citizens through the chicanery of the ballot, will go ahead re- 
gardless of the patient merit confining itself to the work in hand. 
Unswerving fidelity to fashion, and devotion to the dictates of 
self, with a veneer of conventionality, is the creed. 

The fate of "the poor man's wisdom" is proverbial. People 
of position are too busy trying to solve practical problems in 
a practical way, — the only way they know of, — the way it always 
has been done. They have no faith in new or methods with 
which they are not conversant, and, naturally, are averse to any- 
thing that does not originate with themselves. Increasing years 
and experience are the prelude to precaution. What the idealist 
sees with the far-sightedness of almost prophetic divination are 
deemed visionary schemes, and, not being tried, impracticable. The 
unfortunate idealists have, too, a habil of looking down through 
the eye and into the soul of the person they happen to lie dealing 
with, and, putting a literal interpretation to the admonition to be 
no respecter of persons, their countenances, being those of ingenu- 



Souls of Fire 111 



ous persons, are very apt to express that which will be detri- 
mental to their future interests. 

The idealist stands away from the present, lit by the past, 
and casting a shadow upon the future. Extremists, taking no 
substitutes, they never compromise. Voicing sentiments of de- 
termination that, echoing on the chords of valiant hearts, win 
as many battles as practical, temporizing policy will lose. Theirs 
are the words and deeds that crown with imperishable glory 
the arms and flag of the nation. When "All is lost save honor" * 
the better part has been retained. Cool, practical people are 
forever saying: "We have done all that could reasonably be 
expected of us : Haul down the flag !" Good blood will tell ! 
Honor is the extremist's guerdon — long afterwards. "The Cross 
or the bells" in the meantime! 

I have dwelt so largely upon the didactic aspect of poetry 
because I believe it to be the medium through which impres- 
sions may be conveyed that are too subtle for any other. I 
have not dealt with the technical because there are innumerable 
text books upon the subject, and it is a foregone conclusion that 
those who can so deal with it can do so in no other way. Paraly- 
sis of the creative faculties seems attendant upon close appli- 
cation to text books. Any fool can find fault. Critics are 
seldom creators. We work on divergent lines. "A wise man's 
eyes are in his head." The world is full of humbug! To the 
physiognomist and physiologist life is an unending comedy. 
The first smile to read characteristics so evident to them where 
anything but such are expected. The other laughs to see the 
unmistakable imprint of voluptuousness pass for this, that, or 
the other. The stimulating effect of hard work and mental ap- 
plication bears the odium that attends dalliance with the for- 
bidden fruit. It is no wonder that ignorant people are always 
wondering why those who are supposed to know so much do 
not know enough to retain their health. 

The rather peculiar arts that I have referred to are by no 
means claimed as original. We are all well aware of them. One 
cannot go through the world without becoming painfully con- 
scious of the protuberant elbow that seeks to impale us; the 
foot that endeavors to insinuate itself between ours to our detri- 
ment; the gushing friendships that cool, congeal, and ultimately 
solidify under the benumbing influence of some imaginary or, 
generally, pecuniary benefit; the people who imagine they view 
life in Addison's magic mirror, when, as a matter of fact, they 
view nothing but the distortion due to their own prurient im- 
agination. 

The poor we always have with us. Those animated sponges 
whose sole function seems to be that of absorption. Who take 
as a right, but become virulent as soon as denied. There are 
many who may excite sympathy without commanding respect 
or filling us with a desire to enable them to have luxuries at our 
expense. We all know the "respecter of persons" amongst 

1 Francis the First at Pavia. 



1 12 Souls of Fire 



those whose social position is not all they desire, but are en- 
deavoring to get their heads into the strata of solidification, 
much as the ostrich docs when trying to hide from pursuers, 
burying its head in the sand, oblivious to the ridiculous con- 
tortions of the nether extremities that serve to amuse an ap- 
preciative community. ("My Lady de Valenciennes!'' — "Ve- 
roniquc." ) 

How often do we rise from an interview with Bacon's 
query framed, though unvoiced, in our minds : "Was there 
never a flout or a dry blow given?" We are seldom at fault in 
applying to ourselves those hints that are peculiarly applicable. 
The human interrogation point is always with us; that insatiable 
syphon that never seeks but that which is derogatory to our 
character, and then goes forth, as did those of old before Duil- 
ius,i to proclaim our actions when we arc mute. "Though the 
mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small," (Long- 
fclloiv), is very consoling; but interest has usually begun to flag 
by the time they begin to operate. A just retribution seems only to 
be found in the pre-concerted catastrophe of the novel. "A man 
is either a fool or his own physician at thirty," in things per- 
taining to the mind as well as to the body; but prevention is 
better than cure. 

T have not touched upon the relation of poetry to painting 
or statuary or to works of art generally. The picture that is 
not a poem is nothing. We may see horses, dogs, men and 
landscapes without going to an art gallery. 

As air, and to a far greater extent, water, refract and bend, 
apparently, whatever enters them, so does the idealistic ten- 
dency distort and alter the appearance of ordinary life as seen 
through that medium. Absorbed in the contemplation of an 
ideal state of affairs, they miss, only too often, the realization 
of the immensity of the possibilities of common sense. 

Glancing back over what this analysis has led me into, I 
feel sure that in one way or another I have alienated the sym- 
pathies of all but a very small number who love the truth. A 
person cannot turn on an electric light in the presence of the 
man whose relative was electrocuted, or take a good long 
breath of fresh air where there is a baldheaded man, without 
having a mental note registered against him that will be re- 
ferred to on many an occasion when he has forgotten the indis- 
cretion. Goethe said: "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred 
turned; nor hell a fury like a woman scorned." He overlooked 
sectarian animosity; or, perhaps, lacked words. I have dealt 
by contrast too much; but they are the exception. The studies 
are from life; and are true to it. The books we love are those 
which say what we think but cannot, or have not, expressed. To 
those who have eyes for such things the heroic and poetic 
are evident. The "Soul of Fire" may be found beneath the ill- 
fitting tunic of the raw recruit as well as within the snug-litting 
coat thai bears the epaulettes. The most famous charioteers 

1 Duilius, the first Roman commander to be victorious in a sea fight. The senate 
decreed that a torch bearer and a musician playing on the flute should precede him. 



Souls of Fire 113 



of the Circus Maximus were not more daring or skilful than 
the drivers of modern fire apparatus, or taking longer chances. 
Scaeva, 1 with the one hundred and twenty arrows driven into 
his shield, no more heroic than many a "pipeman," with the 
"pipe" swinging from his shoulder, leading the way into new, 
unseen and unknown dangers. He deserves a better fate than 
"The Man with the Ladder and the Hose." The Vikings were 
not more reckless in their predatory expeditions than are our 
modern fishermen in their ordinary occupation, or hazarding 
more than these men are doing every day "carrying sail" when 
"putting her for home." Civilization protects the mass, to ener- 
vation; but entails more hazard on the few. The man who re- 
fuses for personal reasons the humble offering to the body of 
which he is a member — deliberately defrauding the poor — 
serves as a study for t 1 e fifth "Imitation." Conscientious scru- 
ples of that degree pertain to either a hypochondriac or to an 
impostor. The rules hold good all down the gamut of society, 
from those celestial heights where thinking and other trouble- 
some functions devolve upon the valet, to that abyss where are 
no thoughts nor things to think about. 

If the poetry of interior decoration, "dim religious light," 
beautiful music and artistic glass, are more conducive to piety 
and personal magnetism than simple truth, let us render to 
poetry that which pertains to it. As the old philosopher said, 
when reproached for clasping the knees of the tyrant who 
threatened his life: "Is it my fault that his compassion is sit- 
uated there?" Accept facts. We have constantly dinned into 
our ears the self-sacrifice of those who busy themselves with 
social, political or church matters, and gain a prominence they 
would otherwise be debarred from; but we cannot but be struck 
by the significance of the fact that at least there is no com- 
pulsion about the matter, though many a heart-burning for lack 
of opportunity. It is simply a matter of temperament. Some 
love to think and mind their own business; others a whirl of 
distraction. 

I do not intend this work as an apotheosis of failure; never- 
theless, failure does not imply worthlessness, nor success, many 
times, much more than good luck. There is nobility in striving 
honorably: and there is often more dignity in failure than in 
success. "The look that is fixed on immortality wears not a per- 
petual smile ; and eyes, through which shine the light of other 
worlds, are often dimmed with tears." 

To sum up: Poetry, philosophy and religion are inter- 
changeable terms, and are to life what the splendors of sunset 
are to the day; the rainbow to the shower; the light in the eye 
to the promise of the lips; grace to beauty; graciousness to 
beneficence; valor to strength; virtue to virility; modesty to 
merit ; ideals to practice ; wisdom to knowledge ; honor to honesty ; 
faith to form; and hope to everything. 

1 Scaeva, Cassius. A centurion in Caesar's army at the battle of Dyrrhachium, who 
distinguished himself by his extraordinary feats of valor in that engagement. He maintained 
possession of the post with which he was entrusted, although he lost an eye and sustained 
several other severe wounds. His shield was transfixed in 120 places. 



114 Souls of Fire 



XCIII. 

"Indeed, the Idols I have loved so long 
Have done my credit in Men's eyes much wrong; 
Have drown'd my Glory in a shallow Cup, 
And sold my reputation for a song." 

— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. 



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